Mach a Bracha

Until now, I have been somewhat out of the Jewish music loop. But when one's baby demands music, all the time, and Elmo is the devil incarnate (his cackling laugh, shiver), one becomes reacquainted rather quickly. 

My sappy hormones haven't tapered off yet, so I find myself clutching Ben and sniffling to "Ivri Anochi" ("It's so bee-yoo-tee-ful, waaaaah!")

But one of the videos that popped up in my YouTube viewing---"Mach a Bracha" by Shmueli Ungar---has given me food for thought (pun intended). 

For one thing, the video, in my opinion, is particularly well done, which is hard for a Jewish music video (we definitely have more limited budgets than the last "Idol" winner, let's not kid ourselves). 

Secondly, it's the message . . . 

Ma used to say, "Mach a bracha" when she would place a bowl of deliciousness on the table. 

Her father, my Zeidy, used to get upset by the standard Shabbos kiddush. People are standing around, he would note, barely keeping track of what they ate—was the right bracha said? Did they say a nuch bracha? 

A number of years ago, we were in a different shul for Shabbos for a simcha. Whilst at the kiddush, a teenage girl stopped next to us, seemingly looking at the wall. We turned, and noticed she was diligently saying "al hamichya" off of a beautiful glass display. 

Ma was so inspired by this, remembering her father's pet peeve, that she decided to have a similar one made for our shul. 

I'll be honest: Ben doesn't really let me daven (he always wakes up when I try to) and my regular nuch brachas have suffered as well. This video reminded me about the importance of brachas, how the one we recite once a year is no more exalted than the ones we make every day, the shahakols, asheir yatzars, al hamichyas.  

The beginning scene, where he's about to eat a mundane bowl of Rice Krispies, is an ideal example of how we use our brachas to turn all we do, even the most profane, into a great act of service. 

How the Other 99.9% Dates

Han doesn't have many Jewish co-workers. If they are Jewish, then chances are they aren't frum. 

It's a very friendly sort of office, the type where everyone sits down chummily for lunch and shares the details of their lives. 

One fellow, Adam, was relating to Han how he struggles with dating. He missed the boat, he said wryly, by not cultivating a girlfriend in college. Because outside of that setting, he can't seem to meet a special someone. 

To go to a bar, he explains, he would require a "wingman," as a lone man approaching women is considered creepy. All of his friends are in relationships, so no one is available to provide that service. The same creepiness factor is present in exercise classes. Dating apps are geared for women, and he hasn't had any success with them.  

Another co-worker, Sheri, is so gorgeous I have a crush on her. She's fit, beautiful, and has a dazzling smile. She keeps three dresses in her cubicle for her dates, often provided by app. She has to meet these guys, however, at a public location as they definitely cannot know where she lives until they have been vetted. But for all her awesomeness she's also struggling to find a partner. 

There's also a quirky fellow in the office. He has been an amazingly helpful friend to Han, but he's, well, as I said, quirky. However, he is engaged now, and you know how they met? 

A co-worker set them up. Meaning, a shidduch date. 

I have read in multiple frum publications and blogs how the shidduch system sucks, that if we could socialize organically we'd be better off, like how the gentiles roll. I have heard it said that "If I wasn't frum, I'd be married by now." But here's the thing: the frei and the non-Jews aren't meeting organically either. A lot of them have dating difficulties, and others are being set up by friends or family. 

I think that the shidduch system, as it is currently practiced, could use a few updated tweaks. I was forwarded a video by Toby Lieder, who suggested that instead of the bland and essentially uninformative paper profile, we start instead with the "talking profile," a video where the person's personality can be visibly conveyed. I like the idea in theory, although I would have been too chicken to do it. 

But these emailed profiles just aren't cutting it. Technology has made our world so much bigger, when once shadchaning was restricted to one's own social circle. Now suggestions are being summoned from all over the globe, from every hashkafa, and one cannot physically go out with all of them before suffering mental and physical collapse. They have to be more targeted. It should not be acceptable to call others "too picky" just because they did not consider a suggestion on point. 

Where was I? Oh, yes. Gentiles don't have it easier. That was my point. Dating, in general, sucks. 

The Shame Continues

As my readership may recall (if I still have any, that is), singles get a lot of soul-destroying feedback. You aren't doing this right, your personality is sort of eh, and because you didn't go to summer camp when you were 12, you are therefore single. 

But then, the magical time arrives when one's soulmate FINALLY shows up, and you can dance off into the sunset while cackling, "In yo FACES!!!"

There is, for the first time in a decade, the blissful sound of NOTHING. No one has anything to say to you beyond, "Hello." Oh, it is wonderful. So wonderful. 

Then Ben was born, our blissful squishy baby, the offspring we were waiting for. 

But then they came back. They found me again. 

"He doesn't sleep through the night? At his age? When my baby was three hours old, I programmed him to sleep for 24 hours straight." 

"His diaper leaked and you don't have a change of clothes? I don't go anywhere, not even to the mailbox, without three backup outfits." 

"Do you read to him enough? I started my baby on advanced poetry by six months." 

I've discovered I've started to self-flagellate in advance, just in case. "I'm so terrible, I resort to Cheerios as most of his snacks. While I'm at it, he doesn't sleep through the night yet and so he would be better off in foster care as I am therefore an incompetent caregiver."

Maybe because Ma's not here to reassure me that I'm doing an ok job keeping him alive, but I find myself succumbing to all the comments,  doubting my efforts. 

Damn. I thought I was done with this. 

To all the lovely singles who are badgered by everyone: Tune them out. Because they are a fact of life, along with death and taxes. 

We Worry

Everyone in my family is understandably swoony over Ben, especially the little girls who wrestle with each other over the right to look at him. 

What is disconcerting, however, is how nobody seems to trust me with him. 

Luke: 

 

"WHAT IS HE CHEWING ON?!?!" 

"It's a piece of apple. And I'm sitting right here." 

"Oh. Phew." 

Ta: 

"He's going to swallow the pacifier! Also, you're holding him too much." 

Sister: 

"He's hot" or "He's cold." 

Other brother: 

"The blanket is too close to his nose." 

What I find confusing is that these people left their kids with me when they went on vacation. It's because they left their kids with me when they went on vacation that I actually somewhat know what I'm doing. 

Hey, I gave them back their children in one piece, right? 

I know their constant admonitions means that they care. But there's only so much a relatively capable mother can take. 

Luke: 

"WHAT'S HE CHEWING ON?!?!" 

"Dear God, you left your kids with me without a backward glace, they survived, and now you question my ability to keep him alive?!?!" 

Sheepish Luke. 

Ta walks in. 

"WHAT'S HE CHEWING ON?!?!" 

I give up.

Happy Listening

I have to admit that I'm not the best of listeners. I am prone to waiting impatiently for the other person to stop speaking so I can finally talk. Or barrel over them completely. Cough. 

Reading "Talk Less. Listen More" was educating. This segment jumped out at me: 

You also want to avoid asking people personal and appraising questions like “What do you do for a living?” or “What part of town do you live in?” or “What school did you go to?” or “Are you married?” This line of questioning is not an honest attempt to get to know who you’re talking to so much as rank them in the social hierarchy. It’s more like an interrogation and, as a former C.I.A. agent told me, interrogation will get you information, but it won’t be credible or reliable.

In social situations, peppering people with judgmental questions is likely to shift the conversation into a superficial, self-promoting elevator pitch. In other words, the kinds of conversations that make you want to leave the party early and rush home to your dog.

Instead, ask about people’s interests. Try to find out what excites or aggravates them — their daily pleasures or what keeps them up at night. Ask about the last movie they saw or for the story behind a piece of jewelry they’re wearing. Also good are expansive questions, such as, “If you could spend a month anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

I never liked being asked what I do, and so don't usually ask that question. Because what people do for money rarely has to do with who they are. 

It reminds me of an episode of "Will & Grace," where the two go to a wedding. Will is tired of the faces people make when he tells them he's a lawyer, so he lies and says he's a professional tennis player. Another guest says, "Hey, you must know this guy, he's a professional tennis player too!" Will is sweating, but the guy covers for him. 

Will thanks him, and asks what is it really like to be a professional tennis player? The guy says, "I've no idea. I work for the IRS. You know how people respond to that? It's like, 'Hello, I've just killed my family.'" 

You see? 

But Han pointed out that walked up to a stranger and asking about their hobbies right off the bat would be weird. True, it was once done to me and I thought that was a bit presumptuous. We have to be a bit chummier than that before I start spilling my personal beans. 

Yet if someone asked me something innocuous, like, "I'm on the search for a good book. Have you liked anything recently?" or "Isn't this salmon delicious? I wonder what they put on it. Do you like cooking at all? I'm impossible with fish." It's less interrogation, more chatty.

TGIF

• Short-term memory and age.

Learning Kindness

I'm wondering when I'll finally get over having been an "older single." I still identify as such, even though I officially left the moniker behind more than two years ago. 

I have recently been filled with feelings of . . . well, I'm not sure how to put it. 

I was single. I was dating for over a decade. Han showed up when he was supposed to show up. 

So, I could have spent those years feeling the way I wanted to feel, that Hashem has my man tucked away somewhere and when the time is right He'll produce him. In the meantime, therefore, I should simply be.  

But that wasn't allowed. Because whenever I tried to invoke Him, I was told, "No, you have to do your hishtadlus." Yet, what is hishtadlus? It means different things to different people. 

1. It means cold-calling "shadchanim." 

2. It means going out with every guy who's suggested. 

3. It means going to singles events. 

4. It means tackling every male within site and demanding marriage or else they will never draw breath again. 

When I executed as much "hishtadlus" that I felt comfortable with, and was still single, we moved on to other territory: What I must be doing wrong.  

I wish I could say I was confident enough to ignore the naysayers, but I wasn't. I would blog about it, listing proofs as to my normalcy, pleading with my audience to concur that I wasn't a freak, right?  

Either way, finding a spouse was on me: I wasn't doing enough hishtadlus and/or I was a nutter who cleaned her toes during a lobby date. 

I could have been more chillaxed in that time, instead of battling breathing-into-a-paper-bag anxiety. I could have seen my life as more than "pathetically single" and, perhaps, have utilized my time differently. Maybe I would have gotten into sourdough earlier. 

I'm doing that annoying 20/20 hindsight thing. Based on parental hopes alone, I would have still been a nervous wreck. But did others have to rub it in? To make me feel like you-know-what? 

Sigh. 

I suppose one thing I have certainly learned is that whenever that judgy inner voice starts piping that it's "their fault," I shut it down. Or try to, at least, which is more than I used to do before. I think I have become a kinder person after being subjected to wagging fingers for a decade. Everyone has their own burdens. Whether it's their fault or not is besides the point. 

So let's be kind.

Lessons from the Ancient

I have had a recent epiphany. 

I'm old. 

OK, not old old. Not ancient. Not quite the crypt keeper. 

But I'm certainly older than I used to be. 

I like dark chocolate. The type that's 72% cacao? That nasty stuff. Milk chocolate, the joy of my girlhood, is too sweet.

My lower back is something to be coddled and exercised. I wear a posture corrector so it doesn't go to pot while hauling a rather zaftig infant on my hip. 

My kinfauna are dating. (Do they seek my insights after my many, many years in the field? Of course not.) 

Despite my rigorous creaming program, smile lines are fighting back. 

I'm going to be 35 this year. I shouldn't be so surprised. 

I'm not upset by my revelation. It has made be contemplative. 

Should I be having a mini-mid-life crisis? Frankly, I'm too tired. Ben doesn't quite sleep through the night, and I'm too busy gazing at him in a I-can't-believe-this-squishy-baby-is-mine haze to care that my "best" years may be behind me. 

What was so "best" about them, anyway? 

I spent my 20s thrashing about the dating quagmire, and in the process found myself. I think I was on a bit of a time delay, and during those years I had the self-discovery and whatnot that established my identity. I like that. 

I like being sure of myself. Surer. Knowing what I am and what I need and who I want to be. 

So here's to my dark chocolate, creaky bones, and determined wrinkles. It's time to start aging with grace, with the self-assurance I finally found. 

There Goes That Fantasy

When I entered my teens, Ma introduced me to the next level of "literature": Regency romances. 

The authors were typically Joan Smith, Carola Dunn, Fiona Hill. Georgette Heyer here and there, but she used a lot of annoying exclamation points and was rather antisemitic.  The books were usually about a mousey girl who for some unknown reason catches the fancy of a strapping, handsome marquis (he always had a title, rarely a mere Mr.), or about a spirited young woman of striking beauty but was too anticonvention for her own good who for some unknown reason catches the fancy of a strapping, handsome marquis. 

I gobbled them up like tater tots. They were my main form of entertainment for years, until I branched out into medieval romances as well. Cough. 

In the last decade or so, I've left them behind, preferring historical novels of other topics. But I still watch the Austen adaptations with glee. 

My sister-in-law and I swap books, and she excitedly handed me "A Murder in Time" by Julie McElwain. It's about a female FBI agent who gets sucked into a vortex and ends up in Regency England. 

However, she is not familiar with Austen's work, and finds the restrictions on women to be simply ridiculous.  Seeing the era through her eyes, you do realize that she's right. The romance is gone. So while all the language of those books I once enjoyed are there, the limitations women faced, the hardscrabble existence of the other 99% of humanity that wasn't landed gentry, the misconceptions on science and medicine, has sort of removed the glow from those tales. 

It's like when I read "Longbourn" by Jo Baker, and however considerate Lizzy is depicted in "Pride and Prejudice," maids were not granted that consideration. While most women believe they would have been Emma in another life, chances are they would have had the job of scrubbing her boots for a pittance. 

When I was a teenager, "Ever After" was one of my favorite movies. Spirited girl wins heart of prince! Yay! Then I began to read Sharon Kay Penman's novels about the British monarchy, and it became quite clear that princes did not marry for love. They married for political reasons, and had mistresses for love. I think I read somewhere once that character of Danielle was actually based on a mistress of a royal Henri. Being a royal mistress was actually  a great position so had Danielle been offered that, she would have been thrilled. All those scenes of Marguerite angling to become princess is all the more laughable because she would have known that's never. Ever. Gonna. Happen. 

I can't rewatch "Ever After" again knowing that. 

There are times in life when fantasies are fun and helpful. But then you grow out of them, finding you don't need them anymore. 

But I still anthropomorphize toys. Hmm.

I Finally Read Gluckel

Gluckel of Hameln is supposedly required reading, the memoirs of Jewish woman from the end of the 1600s. Every time I tried to take it out there was always a hitch, but I finally got my hands on it and read it through, much to Ben's annoyance ("Hey Ma! What's so interesting?")

What is surprising to me is how money is most of the conversation.  This person is worth this much; that person has that much; this person had this much but lost it. "Thalers," the currency of the time and place, is probably the most repetitive word in the book.

Gluckel had 13 children to marry off, so that was the other theme. Girls of 12 were promised to boys from other cities that they would not see until the "betrothal feast," at which point everything was agreed on. No child said, "Mother dear, not for me." Gluckel herself wed at the age of 14, and was widowed at 44, after 30 years of marriage. 

One passage in particular I found entertaining was when she recounts a visit to her in-laws. While her husband's father was worth a staggering amount,  he gave them a  gift worth a paltry sum. However, she proclaims, we treasured that present, unlike other ungrateful children who suck their parents dry. I can't tell if she's being serious or sarcastic, if she's pointedly chewing out one of her kids.

It's also a reminder of how precarious life was for Jews in the past. The rabble could be roused, the leader could banish. Life was cheap and murders were often unavenged. Never mind illness; Gluckel lost a little girl and many other relatives to diseases that probably do not plague us any longer. 

While reading of all the arranged marriages, I snarked to myself,  "Hey, solution for shidduch 'crisis' right here! Let's bring back betrothing tweens to unseen grooms!"

My neighbor has a great-granddaughter born the same time as Ben. I hear she's quite the cutie. Crisis averted.