Free Devotion by Dani Shapiro

made a final decision to leave the city, we made an appointment for Jacob to see an expert in early childhood development. Jacob’s speech was still lagging, and he had been the last of his peer group to learn to walk. The medication he had taken—the stuff that saved his life—had a sedative effect. Fora year of his infancy, he had essentially been tranquilized. If he was going to need intervention—speech therapy, occupational therapy, who-knew-what—then maybe we should stay in the city, where I imagined such things were more readily available.
    After spending several hours with Jacob doing a comprehensive evaluation, the doctor called us into his office.
    “You realize that most children who survive infantile spasms are eventually diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder,” he began. And then—after a brief, sadistic pause: “Jacob is fine. He exhibits no signs of autism.”
    We moved into the house on a cold, muddy day in early April. I was about to turn forty. Jacob was about to turn three. Michael—heading toward fifty—had switched careers from foreign correspondent to screenwriter. I had spent the previous two years struggling to write a novel. The future was unclear. We had no money to speak of, nothing resembling financial security. Two writers, post–9/11 refugees, strangers in a strange land. We should have been petrified—we should have questioned our own sanity. But we had learned something about what was worth being petrified about, and what wasn’t.

25.
    The small white leather-bound prayer book is embossed on the inside cover with my parents’ names, along with the date and place of their marriage. It has been tucked into the back of a file cabinet drawer for years, along with other mementos of a long-gonelife: expired passports, my mother’s change purse, my father’s old wallet, the velvet pouch that contains his tallit and tefillin. I’ve rarely opened the file drawer, much less the prayer book itself. I haven’t wanted to dwell on my parents as young, hopeful, at the beginning of their lives together.
    But I’ve set myself on a course that doesn’t allow me to be a coward. And so recently I pulled the prayer book—along with a few other items—out of the drawer. It sat on my desk for a while before I actually looked inside. There are prayers for everything. Morning Prayer for Boys. Morning Prayer for Girls. Grace after Meals, of course. I could practically hear the well-dressed wedding guests at Young Israel of Fifth Avenue singing the Birkat Hamazon as the last of the strawberry shortcake was cleared from the tables. In the middle of the book, following these more typical prayers, there is a list of “Blessings on Various Occasions”:
    Before eating bread.
    Before drinking wine.
    Before partaking of food, other than bread, prepared from any of the five species of grain: wheat, barley, rye, oats, and spelt.
    On partaking of meat, fish, eggs, cheese, etc., or drinking any liquor except wine.
    On eating fruit that grows on trees.
    On eating fruit that grows on the ground, herbage, etc.
    On smelling fragrant woods or barks.
    On putting on a new garment.
    On placing a mezuzah on the doorpost.
    On eating any fruit for the first time in season, on entering into possession of a new house or land, on purchasing new dishes.
    On witnessing lightning, or on seeing falling stars, lofty mountains, or great deserts.
    On hearing thunder or storms.
    On seeing the rainbow.
    At the first sight of an ocean or sea.
    On hearing sad tidings.
    On meeting a friend for the first time since his convalescence from sickness.
    This last one reads: Blessed be the Merciful One, who hath given thee back to us, and not given thee unto dust.

26.
    The summer after we first moved to Connecticut, we were invited to a barbecue by the lake. Families from Jacob’s school, people we didn’t yet know, gathered around grills, coolers filled with ice, tonic, gin, wine, sodas. As the sun set over the lake, little