The excitement, the energy, the… the sparkle. Who said it was reserved for twenty-year-olds?

The shoemaker’s children go barefoot. And the electrician’s wife squints in the dim entryway and nearly cracks her skull as she trips over her own two feet.

The electrician’s wife was tired. So tired, in fact, that the dark hallway made something in me snap. Yissachar was an electrician, you’d think he was capable of changing a lightbulb.

Yissachar was eating cold flounder from a plastic plate at the dining room table when I returned from Shifra’s apartment. He looked up for a second, said hi absently, then turned his attention right back to the papers in front of him.

He was nervous. I could tell just how nervous by the spidered plastic cups littering the dining room table. Yissachar didn’t even realize when he did it. His eyes remained glued to his papers as he ripped through those cups, neat lines, top to bottom, around and around, until the cup looked like an octopus and he pressed the round base down on the table and rotated it.

It was a habit I’d discovered 40 years earlier, during sheva brachos, when my brand-new husband learned that our Eretz Yisrael plans might not work out. He’d sat and made phone call after phone call, and while I’d puttered in our tiny kitchen, preparing very fancy deviled eggs for breakfast, he’d ripped plastic cups.

I threw one last glance at him, at his half-eaten food, and went to the kitchen to prepare my own meal. Maybe, when he finally got his license and stopped studying, we’d have supper together again. Maybe then, when Yissachar would be his own boss practicing under his own license, he’d even come home earlier and let his workers stay late to deal with emergencies.

“Your supper will be ready in a few minutes,” I told Shifra.

“Thanks,” she muttered. Her head was bent over an open invitation and she was scribbling furiously. Personal, emotion-laden letters to her friends, because otherwise, what would make them show up to her wedding?

I took out the Panini maker and plugged it in. I spread dressing over an open wrap, added the flounder and vegetables and folded it up. One for me, one for Shifra. I’d planned on making one for Yissachar, too, but oh well, he didn’t even realize what he was eating these days. He ate whatever was available when he got hungry.

“Yum,” Shifra said when I placed the Panini in front of her. “I’m coming over here during sheva brachos and copying over all your recipes, Ma.”

“Aw.”

I took a bite. Wow, I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was. It had been one long, crazy day, and there was still so much to get done in the three weeks to Shifra’s wedding. I’d married off six children before, you’d think I would’ve had this down to a science. But frankly, I was overwhelmed.

Shifra had barely swallowed her first bite when her cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen, and her face turned pink. “It’s Moishy!”

Moishy.

Moishy, Moishy, Moishy.

She grabbed her phone and fled from the kitchen. A moment later, I looked up at the security camera screen and there she was, my kallah daughter, in our backyard, holding the phone to her ear, pacing on the grass. Even on the grainy screen I could make out that huge, goofy Moishy-smile on her face.

Moishy, Moishy, Moishy.