Tasting another World

We spoke about sheifos a lot, in seminary. Ideals, religious ambitions, spiritual goals. We said man is defined by his sheifos. We spoke of homes of Torah, saintly husbands, pious children, worlds of Chesed, revolutions of inner character work. We had big dreams.

I spin the glass around, between my fingers. I look up and out, at the sea and sand beyond us. There are two Israeli Air Force officers, flanking my right and left. Another couple of guys have joined us too, but they are less glamorous in their civilian shirts, so I don't pay them quite as much attention.

We speak about trips to Europe and past conferences. They follow me, as I walk from drinks table to the railing. They've been smiling at me all day, looking to see if I laugh at the jokes the lecturer makes, catching my eye in the silent pauses. I can barely believe that these good looking, polished, sophisticated army officers are interested in me, but even clueless me can read the signs.

I always wondered what my place in the social ladder would have been in a secular mixed school. Would I have been the quiet one, the girl that no guy asks to dance, the wallflower?

I don't feel like one now, with four guys vying for my attention. I savor the thrill, treasure it; it's new to me.

I'm not doing anything wrong. Networking is a good thing, it's one of the reasons we are here. This is perfectly respectable. This isn't cheap, or shady. I'm not being hit on, I'm not flirting. But it's fun, a lot of fun. It would be so easy to continue the relationships. It would take only a few words to exchange numbers, to meet up again.

They are all extremely intelligent, much smarter than the average guys I meet. They are the elite, the result of careful selection, done by the army, and not by my family's amateur 'finding out' phone calls. They are mature and responsible. I feel like an equal with them. I don't need to dumb down my words, I don't need to explain anything. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with guys like this, learn in the same academic institutions as them, be automatically and naturally surrounded by eligible young men.

If only they were Frum. Two of them do have Kippot. Small Kippot, so small it took me a while to notice them. One mentions taking it off, travelling bareheaded when he was abroad. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

"Think about what you really want", someone advised me recently, when I was making a past decision. "Think about the type of home you want, and what's going to get you there."

I can see cafes on the coast, amusement, fun, with these guys. I can see company, excitement, romance.

But I can't see a Shabbos table, I can't see Torah, I can't see truth. Where can it end? Will it bring me closer to where I want to be?

So we say goodbye, at the end of the day. We say a lot more, in the last smiles we exchange, the words we leave unspoken. And I let them go. I go back to my borderline spinsterhood, and my Shidduchim.

I'm alone at home again, missing the guys and the taste I had of another life. I hope that God is valuing these choices. My sheifos are a lot simpler these days. To stay as Frum as I used to be, to cling onto what once was so natural. The goals may sound simpler, but the battle is much more difficult.

Skipping to Motherhood

I could buy a Sheitel and a ring, and move to a place where no one knows me. I could say my husband is a Masmid, and learns in Kollel night and day, and thus explain away his absence. I could have a baby, and raise him on my own. I could stop waiting for the right man, and skip to the next stage. I could be a mother, before I'm a wife.

I won't, of course. But sometimes I want to.

I told my theory to the guy I was dating, when we sat on the grass one night.

"First you think marriage is about having a permanent boy friend, and it's not."

Teenagers also want to get married. They want a boy to give them red roses and heart shaped candies. They want a boy to tell them he loves them. They want the romance, and the relationship. But marriage should be about giving, not taking. They aren't there yet. If they do get married their relationship will have to mature, after the Chuppah, for it to last.

"Then you think marriage is about giving to each other, building a relationship. That's closer, but still not enough."

When I started dating, I was nineteen. I wanted to get married, but secretly also hoped I could push off having kids for a couple of years.

"When you actually want to have children, that's when you know for sure that you're ready for marriage, ready to build a home"

I can't put my finger on the exact moment when it all changed. It happened gradually, I suppose.

You may say that it's peer pressure, being surrounded on all sides by strollers and pacifiers.

You may say it's my biological clock beginning to tick louder.

I think that it's age, maturity. Reaching that stage where you want to love without limits, where you want to be a parent, and raise a child.

You're scared, it's a big responsibility, but you feel ready for it, ready to be a mother.

And now I'm past the stage of readiness, I've reached the stage of impatience, of longing.

I hold out my finger, and a baby grasps it and wraps his little hand around it. I read a story about a stuffed elephant to a chubby toddler, she smiles and repeats the words. "Kick" I tell the six year old, showing her how to swing all by herself.

The right guy hasn't showed up yet. But I want to be a mother. I wonder what would happen if I could buy a Shaitel and a ring, and move to a place where no one knows me...

I'm 23

They are only 23. They are coming back from India, becoming students and waitresses, living life step by step, vaguely thinking of plans for the future. They are still young.

I'm 23 already. I should be married, should be a mother; should have settled down, moved on. I shouldn't be in this position. I'm an older single.

You suggest evenings for single girls, events arranged specially for those left on the shelf. I tried them. I went to Shiurim, organized for girls "in my situation".

It felt like stepping back in time, back to my schooldays. I'm used to boardrooms and conferences now, not classrooms where we sit in rows, like good little girls, and are lectured to on why we should be brave, have faith, on how there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

It felt like a quasi support group, where all that united us was our unmarried status.

There's more to me, than being single. There's more to life, than waiting to get married.

So I'm 23. I'm not a spinster, of the Victorian era. I'm not an old maid, sitting on the shelf. So I'm not married, not a mother yet. I'd like to be, I'm not. But I am young, nontheless, all the same.

There's a world out there, there's a life ahead. There's more than being a hanger on, at the fringes of society, tagging on to couples and families. There's more than being an older single, seeking comfort with the others who struggle.

What I search for is acceptance as an adult, with an adult's life, despite not having the marital trappings, despite my flat stomach, and bare finger.

There is a different world, where I can be me. Where I can travel and study and experience. Where I don’t need to count the days, the months, the years that pass, while I'm in limbo.

I have one foot in it, already. Yet if I step out, into that world, I'm stepping further from my ideals, my life's ambitions, further away from what I truly want. The world outside is not what can fulfill my dreams, of a simple, focused, home, and a family, and a husband who learns Torah.

So I stay where I am. I don't become a student again, taste life on campus. I don't quit my job, and try out living in NY. I don't backpack across Europe, meeting strangers on the way.

I stay. I wait. I'm only 23.

How do they know so much anyway?

"I'm not wearing my best dress. Because I'm saving my best dress for your wedding"
Says my 6 year old niece.

Sweet.

"You're so silly", her cousin says to her. "It will be too small for you by the time she's married, for sure!"

WTH? It the forecast so dismal?

"No. How can you say that? She can have a Shidduch tommorow, and bingo be married!"

Pipes up another little voice at the Shabbos table.

Thanks for the faith, darling.

It's my hair, I swear!

I'm tired of sticking my hair under the shower head, rinsing off the shampoo, pulling through a comb, stepping outside, and having to prove to the world that, no, I'm not wearing a wig, and yes, it's my own hair.

If it looks good- it's obviously a top of the range wig.
If you're having a bad hair day- it must be you're wearing last year's wig, which got singed while you were slaving over the kitchen stove.
Whatever I do to my hair, whatever look I pick- long, short, straight, curly - people keep on assuming it’s a wig!
I thought of going for the green hair with spikes look, but I doubt that would help. Don't Purim wigs look something like that?

"What’s your maiden name?" Asks the random lady I've just met and am making small talk with, in the hopes she'll set me up with the love of my life.

"Do you have kids?" asks the old classmate I bump into in town.

I guess if 90% of the Charedi female population over 19 is wandering around in a wig, there's no reason for them to think I am any different. Probably it's the same in L.A with nose jobs.

"It's because you look and act like an adult", explains one married friend. Adult = Married?

"It's because you wear your hair down", explains another. Single = Ponytail? No, the ponytail Shaitel is in. Maybe braids?
(Yet she does have a point. On those days where I venture out in a ponytail, the question at Kiddushes changes to "Have you finished school?", and in Israel, school does NOT mean college. Then, instead of clarifying that I don't have kids, I get to relate that I've finished high school, AND finished seminary, AND graduated from college, and am now working. All the time seeing the "18 + 1 + ? + ?" additions going on in my questioner's head, with them unsuccessfully attempting to work out how old I actually am.)

So much talk about married women being mistaken for free-as-the-wind, but the singles-in-shaitels phenomena is much more worrying! Who will think to set us up, if we are already married? Shidduchim for adulterers haven't as yet caught on, as far as I know.

I think I've found the true cause of the "Shidduch crisis".

Anyway, this Lag Baomer, I want to have a singles wig-burning-bonfire. Come, and bring a (hopefully male and eligible) friend! I've invited the dudes from the Meah Shearim to help out, they have a lot of experience.

Meanwhile I've come to terms with my married status. Hey, the store keepers are calling me "Gveret"! That's a plus!

Why I'm still single- as a Chutznik

Some guy asked me that, one moonlight night, when I thought he was about to propose. Anyway, you, dear reader, didn't ask me this romantically, under the stars, but here's the answer all the same.
Aside from G-d, and his plans (yes, I'm sure he features heavily in the equation, I am religious after all) and aside from me being kind of picky (no, shadchanim, I didn't really admit that, this blog is ANONYMOUS), I'd account a lot of it to falling between two worlds.
We, chareidi children of Olim, are neither here nor there.
We can choose to be Israeli, but that means giving up so much. Thinking for ourselves, for a start. Accepting others, educating ourselves and our children, and so much more than that. I don't want to tar and feather all of Israeli chareidi society, but yes, that's what it would be to me, if I married one of the Israeli boys I've dated.
And Americans? Making aliyah was a struggle, learning the language, figuring out how to make it here. And this is our land, the Jewish land. I want to live here, stay here, raise my kids here. I don't want to go back. Not many Americans have the same dream, they usually want to "see how things go". They are tied to the hamburgers and the easy life. Plus easy lives make for immature men..
So that's me, caught in the middle.