SOTW: The Biggest Hug

Episode 6/8:

Rivky Gurevitch

I often get asked if I feel lonely living so far from my family and friends, who are all back east. The answer is no, not at all. We’re busy, and we’re thrilled to be doing what we do. So, thankfully, loneliness really doesn’t set in. At least that was true until the day that we were tremendously blessed with our second set of twins. The excitement and joy were overwhelming! My husband’s mother and my mother were both scheduled to come and help out, but, at the last minute, technical things came up that made it impossible for either of them to come. We were basically on our own. 

The hospital where I gave birth doesn’t have a nursery. The newborn twins were with me full time, and with no help at home, my husband had to leave to be with our older set of twins. We felt so alone on that first day—the video calls and facetimes were great, but they just weren’t cutting it. I had no idea that at a Chabad House some three hours away, a fellow Chabad rep, Mimi Feldman from Bend, Oregon, was cooking up a storm. She showed up at the hospital the next day, unpacking an abundance of homemade foods that she had prepared for me. She cooked everything from scratch—there’s virtually no kosher availability in Oregon—and then made the long, hard, winding drive alone, bringing me wholesome meals with everything from smoothies to bagels and pastries. After she left the hospital, she stopped over at my house and delivered ten huge pans of food—suppers and Shabbos meals and more for my family. It felt like the biggest hug. Months later, and I’m still holding on to the feeling of the warmth and kindness that my fellow shlucha unpacked that day.