#tzippora

Your father is Godchosen. He supervises the sacrifices and runs the temple and gives counsel to leaders, sun up to sun down. Your mother smiles at you with sad eyes when you ask to see your father. “Your father is Godchosen” she tells you. 

You grow and start caring for sheep. The life of a shepherd is a simple one, a rewarding one. Wandering the land with your sisters as the sheep graze, tilting your face up to the sun to feel its rays. 

Your sisters bring home an Egyptian man who saved them from brigands at a watering hole. He looks lost and scared and alone, like a wayward sheep who has lost his herd. Your father pulls him aside after dinner; an hour later, he comes to you. “This is Moses. He will be staying with us. We can always use more shepherds, hm?”

And so Moses becomes a shepherd. Sometimes you see him tilt his face up to the sun and you know that this man loves shepherding like you do, revels in the simplicity of it. During the lambing, you work together on several difficult births, and you decide: this man is going to be yours. 

The week before you marry, Moses comes to you in the evening. “There is something I must tell you” he says. “I was once a prince of Egypt.” You listen to his tale, holding him as he describes the slavery and the day he could not restrain himself anymore. “Do you want to go back?” you ask. “No,” he says “I have everything I could want here. ”

Some of your people never warm to Moses, but you don’t care. You have your husband and your children and your sheep and it is all you have ever wanted. 

Your children grow up and build families of their own. Moses’ hair whitens, his face wrinkles, and he is just as handsome as when you married him. You dote on your grandchildren and watch the sheep with your husband and life is good. 

And then Moses comes home from the sheep, and the look in his eyes is different. “I have” his voice cracks “I have been chosen. The God of the Hebrews has come to me; I am to lead them out of Egypt. ” You rock him in your arms as he cries. “I love being a shepherd. ” he whispers, and tears run down your cheeks.