As the light from the torches of the Egyptians illuminates the dunes in the distance behind them, a staff is raised and the waters begin to part. Women cry out in delight and their vision becomes blurred with the wetness that fills there. Children begin to run ahead and pull their parents out of their shock. Fathers call after them to slow down as the ground dries and walls formed by sea rise to completion. Boys and girls marvel at the creatures they can see and call behind them to their awestruck parents to ask for the name of each. Mothers ask their sons to slow down, to bask in the miracle just a little longer as fathers swing their daughters onto their shoulders in celebration.
Tambourines are handed out. Women taking one and telling those behind them to take one and continue to pass them back. An elderly woman and her husband stop walking and face the wall of water as they watch the fish watch them. She rests her head on her husband’s shoulder as a blue-grey creature with a smile that glows from within swims closer to them than she had been expecting and the wind is knocked out of her in her delight. Her husband chuckles as his eyes follow a school of fish that move their fins to the rhythm of the music now playing.
New grandparents walk out of time with the music each holding a twin baby for their tired daughter and son-in-law. Not everyone made it to this day and they have taken the role of surrogate parents for their recently orphaned son-in-law very seriously. Each grandparent whispering to the new life sleeping in their arms with slow rolling tears: “I wish you could see what I’m seeing.”
Further back, a newlywed woman receives her tambourine and watches her husband taking in the scene ahead of them in awe. She smiles gently and moves her instrument to the time of those around her, singing tenderly, pushing past the verses that make her voice catch as her emotions flow freely down her face. Beside them, a man whispers to the One above as he turns away from his wife to hastily wipe his eyes. She raises her hand to his cheek and turns his face back towards her, forcing him to look her at her as she tells him firmly “It’s over. We are truly slaves no more.” He bends to lift her from the waist, spinning her around as he sobs in ecstasy.
The sound of wagons being pulled does nothing to diminish the strength in the vibrations of the songs of praise and thanks being sung. The oldest of the generation wonder how their grandchildren will tell their grandchildren of this wondrous time. A wagon filled with women whose folds in their skin tell of the life they have lived and of the slavery they have endured lie back on the wood beneath them and marvel at the juxtaposition of the bright blue ocean walls against the starry black night sky.
Each walk through the walls raised from blood, tears, and faith thanking G-d for giving them this moment. Families, children, the elderly, and the young bounce and cheer in joy and praise. Their walk of freedom inked deeply into their memories forevermore.
