Kafoi Tov

I would love to catch up with you soon! her text said. 

I would love to also, I typed back, but the kids have the croup. 

Her response: Such tzaros by akaros! 

Huh? 

It took me a full day to decipher that phrase. Did she mean—

Oh no she didn't.

"I wasn't complaining!" I ranted to a laughing Han. "I was just making a statement! 'The kids are sick'! That's it! I wasn't saying 'Oh woe is me that I ever became a mother because I haven't slept in a week because a wheezing toddler was crying all night'!"

It became Han's catchphrase for a week, every time I made statement about the kids. "Such tzaros by akaros!" 

The annoying thing it is rhymingly catchy. 

Contemplating this phrase a bit more, I realized further my insult. 

When one marries at a, er, "elderly" age, there's this concept that one's marriage is quite simply, a miracle. A neis. Heck, your anniversary should be a codified holiday, up there with Chanukah and Purim. The impossible happened! The oil lasted for 8 days and that beyond hope spinster wed! 

If someone married at 20 and had five kids and she simply stated, "My kids are sick," no one would respond, "Such tzaros by akaros." Her marriage and children aren't miraculous. It was perfectly natural. So it's understandable if it feels like a bit much, after all. 

With the passage of time, I thought my . . . bitterness over my single experience had faded. I'm busy now with not sleeping due to a child's foot in my kidney and freaking out how to get him to eat more than Cheerios. 

Yet then a dodgeball gets hurled at my head and *ow* I'm back.   

My personal takeaway from my single decade plus was that all marriages are bashert; some are simply on a different timeline. Others don't see it that way. It's that if you're single by a certain age, chances for marrying at all plummets down to negative zero. 

Even now, married for nearly eight years, someone feels the need to remind me: you were such a helpless case that you should be on your knees every day thanking God that you're married and you have children. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful. Of course I am! But I would like to be treated like anyone else who's married and has a family: that when you slept four hours—nonconsecutive—because the kids took turns waking up and wailing, that someone says, "Oy, that sounds rough!" instead of "Shut your mouth, you ingrate!"   

It Sucks Everywhere

A trailer popped up in my feed for the new film, Oh Hi, and against my better judgement, I let it play through. (It is very UA, so I do not recommend looking it up if you're squeamish.)

When Molly meets Isaac, everything seems to click into place. They are on the same page about so many things! The two have a whirlwind romance, and are off on a weekend getaway to a cabin. 

At some point, Molly sighs and gazing into Isaac's eyes, mentions something about them being a couple—to Isaac's surprise. 

Isaac quickly disabuses her of the notion. No, no, no, they're not a couple! Ha ha! No, they're just having fun! No strings fun! 

Molly then goes off the rails. She then proceeds to, in essence, kidnap Isaac in an attempt to convince him that he wants to be her boyfriend.  

OK, I have to admit that in the past, when a guy said "no," and I thought I liked him, I was sort of tempted to do the same.  

I have heard people complain, many times, that if they weren't frum they'd be married. I don't know what they are basing this on. If anyone reads anything about modern relationships, it's as much of a bleak hellscape as it is for single frummies. 

There is this phenomenon, for instance, of men as not being as "in" the relationship as his girlfriend is, but he doesn't want the drama of a breakup. So matters drift along, where she expects an imminent engagement and he's desperately hoping she'll leave him on her own volition. 

I know this isn't much comfort, but: it sucks everywhere. 

Frankly, I'm not sure if there ever was a golden age of relationships. None of us would be keen on the whole arranged marriage setup (I'm assuming). Chassidish b'shows are a rather acquired taste (cool for them, not for many). It's not like marriage guarantees a happy relationship. Because the stigma has been lessened, people actually feel free to divorce—which should be technically a good thing?—and now frum divorce is on the rise.  

There are all sorts of suggestions to completely overhaul "the system" in completely unenforceable ways. Yet the system isn't really a system, it's a vague set of guidelines that's barely being abided to. Even if the guidelines were being strictly followed, that wouldn't guarantee someone marriage, or a happy one at that. 

Yes, it seems to be grossly unfair how a 20-year-old pipsqueak trips into an engagement with seeming little effort. But as I get older, and presumably a wee bit wiser, I've learned that everyone struggles in some way at some point in their lives.  

In the end, none of us know what others are going through. It's often not public knowledge. So while it may seem as though those young chippies are skipping off into a blissful future, who knows what they have dealt with or will deal with in their lives? A wedding is a beginning, not an ending. Life can be one crazy ride.  

Back to the Past

Today's fashion trends has me laughing. 

You know how in Back to the Future, when Marty ends up 30 years in the past, in 1955, and everything is beyond recognition and comprehension? 

So if Marty took the Delorian back 30 years from 2025 to 1995 (God, I'm old) he would see that—

Not THAT much of a difference. 

OK, cell phones aren't around yet, and he would actually have to use a paper map, but the fashions are the same. 

And, well? '90s fashion kinda sucked. 

Floor length denim skirts? 

Platform shoes? 

The long, blocky blazer? 

They're baaaa-aaaaack. 

Skater jeans? Why? 

I can't find anything to wear. 

I'm going to have to wait this out for another few years. Now, the 2010s? THAT was fashion.   

"Rabbis and Wives"

Back in May, the NY Times Book Review rhapsodized over Sons and Daughters, a very posthumous English publication of a Yiddish serial by Chaim Grade. 

Chaim Grade (pronounced Grah-deh) was a Yiddish writer of great renown, to the point when Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel for literature, many in the Yiddish community thought it should have gone to Grade. 

Grade died in 1982, and his widow refused to release any of his papers; after her death in 2010, his documents were pounced upon, and a Yiddish serial that had yet to be translated and published was dusted off and made ready. 

I don't like fighting other library patrons for new releases, so I requested an older Grade book, Rabbis and Wives. It's a series of three novellas, each depicting a very certain type of rabbi: a humble, learned, compassionate man, who eschews a shteler because he cannot bear to tell the poor women of the community that her chicken is not kosher, nor does he want to be embroiled in local disputes. This rabbi is not recognized by many for his holiness, but he doesn't care, obviously. 

Grade vividly depicts a world that was, down to the women's fashions and styling of male facial hair. He describes the children chafing against the ideology of their parents—including the debate if the Land of Israel should be settled by Jews now (Mizrachis) or if Moshiach should come first (Agudahniks). 

The level of detail is mesmerizing, to the point I have no idea how non-observant Jews or non-Jews could possibly chap this universe. One visual made me laugh out loud: the young people are inappropriately taking boat rides down the river on Shabbos, boys and girls cavorting together, however, of course they would not smoke in the streets on Shabbos, for: "they come from good families, after all." 

I had not expected a book such a this, and pulled up his Wiki entry. Apparently, he had learned in Novoardik, and seven years under the Chazon Ish. Rabbis and Wives is dedicated to the wife of the Chazon Ish! Despite the fact that Grade left observance, he apparently maintained a great respect for the rabbinate and his own Rav.  

Grade's mother and first wife were killed in the Holocaust; they remained while he fled, believing that women and children wouldn't be harmed by the Nazis. He tends not to address the war in his books; they are mainly time capsules. 

Here, one can truly envision what life was like before the war; what the shul politics were, what the marriages were like, how children behaved (gotta say, kinda badly). The perspective isn't narrow through one narrator, so one can see the whole picture. 

I think I'm gonna buy Sons and Daughters.