“I-I think that I wouldn’t make a big deal out of one or two times,” he said carefully. “It’s a long day, he probably needs a break, and you know he’s always been the type who gets swept away by music. It’s not the worst thing if he loses track of time.”

Perri’s eyes were no longer narrowed. Baruch Hashem.

“But for sure we should keep an eye on him,” he went on. “Let me know what you’re seeing. Hopefully it will all be okay.”

Perri was silent. Chaim hoped that meant the conversation was over. He had a lot to do tonight — his chavrusa was waiting, and then he had to prepare the marei mekomos for the next sugya the kollel would be learning.

“So I’ll see you later?” he said, taking a step toward the door.

Perri got there first. She put her hand on the handle. “Wait.”

Chaim pursed his lips. “What?”

“I think you should speak to his maggid shiur. Or maybe the mashgiach. Or both? You know, sound them out, hear if they’re noticing anything.”

Chaim closed his eyes briefly. He’d never been the type who voluntarily approached authority figures, not even when he was growing up in America and had no issue with a language barrier. Back in high school, some of his friends had run aggressively after their rebbeim, sharing their not-quite-ripe chiddushim or asking questions that would be answered the next day in shiur anyway. “That’s how you get shaychis!” they explained. “You have to make it happen!”

Chaim had never taken that approach. He wasn’t going to waste his time or the maggid shiur’s time just for the sake of being noticed. If he had a real question, then that was something else. During his second year learning in Eretz Yisrael he’d found Reb Mattis, but it wasn’t because he chased him for the sake of chasing — it was more that Reb Mattis had the answers he needed. So his hesitant post-shiur questions had spun into longer conversations, and eventually invitations for Shabbos meals, which spun into a real relationship. But Chaim had never become a person who chased people just “to have a shaychis.”

Now, with Shloimy’s maggidei shiur and mashgiach native Hebrew speakers, the idea of initiating a conversation was even less inviting. His spoken Hebrew was basic at best, more like a stumbling version of Mishnaic-era Lashon Hakodesh spiced with an occasional modern phrase.

“You think I should speak to his maggid shiur? Why?”

Perri didn’t quite roll her eyes, but the exasperation on her face reminded Chaim of Simi having a Teenaged Moment. “Because you want to check on your son,” she said. “You want to be an involved father. Don’t you?”

“I do. For sure,” he lied.

“Great. So let me know what they say. Because I’m really worried. I’m the mother, you know? I have to trust my instincts. And also, you should trust my instincts.”

Chaim nodded. “Right. So I need to go now, my chavrusa’s waiting, but I’ll try to give the maggid shiur a call sometime over the next few days.” He took another step to the door.

“The next few days? It’s your son!”

Now Chaim was annoyed. “Right, and I care about him, and I’m happy to give the maggid shiur a call just to check in, but really nothing terrible happened and I do have someone waiting for me.”

Perri finally took her hand off the door handle. “Okay,” she said in a small voice. “Good night.”

W

hen Chaim walked through the door the next night, everything seemed perfectly homey and calm. Dovid and Yechezkel were practicing kugelach on the living room floor. In the kitchen, a Journeys song was playing, and Simi was humming along as she set the table for her parents’ post-kids supper.

Chaim put down his hat and jacket. “How’s everyone doing?”

“Good,” Yechezkel mumbled, his eyes on the kugelach Dovid was sweeping off the floor.

“Good day at cheder?” Chaim tried again.

“Uh-huh.”

He nodded and headed to the kitchen. “Where’s Miriam?” he asked Simi.

“Studying at Leah’s house. She has a huuuuge test.”

“Mmm,” he responded.

You want to be an involved father. Don’t you? he heard Perri’s accusation from last night. His kids were all fine, really. Yehuda called from yeshivah dutifully every Erev Shabbos, going through the regular checklist: the weather is fine/the food is bad/the learning is good/no I don’t need more money. Bochurim were like that, he knew. You can’t expect major conversation from them. If they went so far as to initiate a major conversation, it could even be a red flag: maybe they weren’t happy in yeshivah.

The girls were regular girls, pretty much the way he remembered his sisters. They seemed healthy and happy, aside from the typical drama and trauma and kvetching and clothing crises that apparently went with the territory on their side of the mechitzah.

The two little boys were learning well; he went through their papers every week at Avos U’Banim and they definitely knew the material. Yechezkel was a little scatterbrained — he was always looking for some lost item — but he went to cheder happily every day. What more could you want from a little boy?

Shloimy — well, Shloimy had always been hard to read. The feedback from his rebbeim had always remained surface-level. Your son is doing fine, he knows the material, he doesn’t make any trouble, he’ll get into an aleph high school. Pretty much like his own impressions.

The only person who’d seen something deeper was Rebbi Yudelevitz, back in fifth grade. Chaim still remembered what he’d said that night on the phone: “Your son needs music lessons. Taaminu li, trust me on this — there’s something in his neshamah that’s hungry for music.”

Neither Chaim nor Perri had ever touched an instrument; music was something you either turned on or watched other people produce. So Rebbe Yudelevitz’s pronouncement was the strangest thing. Strange enough that Perri had bought a keyboard and found a music teacher the very next day.

And Shloimy really did connect to the music in some essential way, a soul connection that only grew when he switched from keyboard to guitar. Sometimes, when he sat over the guitar wholly absorbed in his picking, the music seemed to remove him from his family and take him to a realm Chaim could sense, but not see. It was almost as if there was a sign hanging there: Private Property. Stay Out.

Had Shloimy’s neshamah really been hungry? Was it hungry still? Chaim never claimed to understand how music worked. He definitely had no idea what it did inside the remote inner world of his son. But he was pretty sure that one late or missed seder wasn’t the sign of a terrible impending disaster.

Perri entered the kitchen and looked at him expectantly.

“Hi?” he half-said, half-asked.

“Hi. How was your day? Any update?”

“Update?” He sat down uneasily.

“You know, from the maggid shiur?”

Chaim sighed. “I didn’t call him yet. But I will.”

“Ah,” Perri said. She went over to the counter and, lips tightly pursed, ladled soup into two bowls.

So maybe he wasn’t such an involved father, but who said his kids really wanted that? He could tell Perri a thing or two about a certain involved father. A father who could never restrain his desire to chart out the details of his child’s life. A father who was still instructing his 41-year-old son what to do, what to aim for, where to go, and how to get there.

He never wanted to be that kind of father to his son.

To be continued….

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1040)