How are you aging?
As many of you know, for the past 23 years I have been living in an all-male house. Just me and my boys and husband #1. It has been a house with no makeup-sharing tips or trips to get manicures. (Though a few weeks ago I took daughter-in-law #1 for a manicure. I had to call my dil expert to help me through it, but I think we did okay.) Half the time I don’t even look in the mirror, and I only knew to start coloring my hair when one of my monkeys said, “Hey, mom, what’s with the gray hair?” Ya, good times.
People spend a ton of money on trying to look younger. Sometimes it works and sometimes you look at someone and wonder if they see what they look like. I truly feel that the people you have known the longest rarely look older to you. At least that is how I see those people. My friends from elementary school and high school — they always look pretty much the same to me. When I was in Israel, I took a bunch of boys for pizza (as opposed to the bunch of boys we took for waffles, the roommates we took for burgers, or the girls I took for ice cream — don’t even ask) and I saw a guy who I hadn’t seen in over 25 years. I looked at him, and he looked at me, and he recognized me. Well, that just set my ego afloat. I looked recognizable after all that time! So I walk over to the table of son #3’s friends and I say, “Hey guys, life lesson — when someone recognizes you after 25 years, it means you aren’t aging as badly as you think you are!” For a woman, that means that your weight is more or less the same and your hair color is more or less the same. For a man, it means you still have hair…
Of course the boys humored me with a positive response, while internally probably thinking, “Hey lady, you are OLD, don’t kid yourself.” Yes, boys, obviously I am old, I am visiting my 19-year-old baby in Israel. I used to want to date the chayalim and now I want to adopt them. I know I am old!!!
This brings me to my topic — the shidduch crisis. I have made, thank God, two successful matches. I have tried to make more and continue to try, but so far, I have only those two. Apparently, the only way I am getting into heaven is if I make one more, so I really need to give it the old college try.
One of my matches, my friend Deena, is the one who I stayed with in the Old City. About 27 years ago, she and I went to a party together, and a few days later I met someone who saw her at the party, and I got the two of them together. Thank God, all of these years later, eight kids, a grandchild, they are still together and happy (and though they were both in law school when I fixed them up, he is now a rosh yeshiva).
I came home with more determination than ever to fix people up. Attention readers — do you have single children? Do your single children have friends? Do you have friends or neighbors with single children? Try brainstorming and come up with some ideas. Make some phone calls, get some names out there. Let us all try to help make some matches! It seems that dating these days is harder than ever, but we all know boys and girls, and you never know what could happen. Encourage your kids to go out just once, because you never know who that person might know. God works in mysterious ways!
So what does this have to do with my being in Israel? Not much, except for the story about the guy who recognized me, and that staying with my friend and seeing pictures of her beautiful family, and the weddings they have made — I just kept saying to son #3, “I did that…”
Okay, it wasn’t really me, I was God’s messenger for that shidduch, but you know what I mean.
Next week I will tell you about the bird and the Kotel. It is a doozy….
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck knows she should look in the mirror more before she goes out in public, but sometimes it is just too scary….
comments