Just call me Chaviva

Several years ago -- I do not recall when or how or where or even why -- I began remembering.

There I was, surrounded by thousands of people, all dressed similarly in fabrics of tan and brown with shades of subtle and quiet color, clothed as one would be in the midst of the desert to shield the body from the sun, to shield the face from a windy mess. Around me, there was a dark sky, loud thundering, wind blowing from every direction, flipping my hair into my eyes, around my face. I reached up with dark, tanned skin, to pull the long dark hair away from my face. And there, on my hip, in cloth wrapped around me in a swing, was a child, no more than a few months old. People around me spoke in low voices, calm but fearful, curious and questioning. But I, standing in silence, stared at the clouds swirling, the wind whipping, the light and darkness molding around the mountain. The wind continued to blow, the baby began to cry, and the cloth around my feet whipped around me, my hair again in my eyes. We were awaiting words from G-d, from Moses. I stood at Sinai, and this is what I saw.

This isn't creative fiction or narrative. It isn't me being thoughtful or pensive or hopeful as to what maybe it would have been like to be at Sinai. I've had these memories, the vivid imagery that I cannot even put into words appropriately here. The colors, the smells, the sound of the wind and the voices. It's the truth I have to accept, my neshama stood there with a child, it seems, awaiting the Torah.

Believe me if you want, if you will. Or take my words as creative fiction, my mind molding a history it could only wish for. Either way, every time I go to shul, every time I daven, this image plays out in my mind. I don't know where it came from, I don't know how it got there, but it was placed in my memory for a reason I imagine.