I don’t care where he learns. I don’t care if he’s Moshe Rabbeinu with Elon Musk’s net worth. He’s not marrying my daughter

Sleep is so nice. So, sooooo niiiiiice.

I can sleep forever. I can keep my head buried in my pillow, while I float away, float away, I have no idea where, it doesn’t matter, except that annoying beep — what’s beeping?

It’s kids. Kids singing, warbling, The wheels on the bus go beep, beep, beep.

But now they’re not singing. They’re crying. And hey, is that Shiri? Shiri, working as a playgroup morah, not an assistant, and I need to know whose brilliant idea it was to ask Shiri to cover for the absent                                                         . Shiri’s my sister — my 26-year-old baby sister — and I love her, despite, or maybe even because of, her special needs, and I know she needs to learn independence, but not real independence, we’ve discussed this a hundred times; she only needs to feel like she’s an adult, and let me tell you something — is anyone listening?  — finding yourself on your own with twelve screaming toddlers does not make you feel good, it makes you feel like an epic failure, and I bet Shiri will never agree to go help the regular playgroup morah cut all those craft projects again like she always loved doing, so what was the point? There’s pushing and there’s pushing too hard, and it’s Chavi, it’s always Chavi, pushing too hard, like if she’ll push Shiri hard enough, she’ll force her to stop having special needs. And also, aaaaaargh, I’m going to be sick. Gaaah. Glurp. Ggggg….

A flash of dull beige streaked with shapes that I think outlines the form of a chair — and maybe a person sitting in it? — fills my vision. I try discerning what I’m seeing, but then all I see is Shiri surrounded by twelve screaming toddlers, Chavi shoving more babies into the mayhem, cheering wildly, and… Ah. My head. This is nice. Sooo nice… gwooooaaaallllllllll….

I snap awake suddenly. An overwhelming thirst overtakes me, and I want to bring the word to my lips. Water, give me water.

My vision is in better focus now, and I can make out Pinchas’s figure in that chair, a dull beige wallpaper behind him. I can see that he’s talking on the phone. But when I try to catch his attention, alert him to my terrible thirst, my vision blurs again, and I see Dobbie — my sister Dobbie who moved to Toronto — in that pink skirt, and No, no, no, Dobbie is not wearing that pink skirt, I am for sure dreaming. Nightmaring, I mean. I mean, I hinted a hundred times, and then I told her straight out — she looks like a flamingo in that thing. Someone should tell her. She can still go home and change. Or maybe she can’t, because Toronto, but she can go shopping, I’ll take her shopping, what kind of absurd idea was it to move to Toronto with a whole family, when you lived your whole life in Brooklyn, within a 22-minute walk of your parents and all your eight siblings. I knew this would never work out, now look at this, she’s dancing with SHIRI, and all those TODDLERS, and I wouldn’t even CARE, except that she’s my SISTER, so she’s dancing with ME, and worse, my DINI is on her other side, and DINI SHOULDN’T BE SEEN DANCING WITH FLAMINGO AUNTS when she’s all brand-new to the shidduch parshah, please, Dini, go dance with all the — oi, the acoustics are terrible, I hate this hall, my feet are killing, my throat is killing, am I breathing? And, oh my goodness, why did the Riegler Bubby dance with the kallah before the Simon Bubby? The kallah’s bubby goes first, and I hope the kallah’s earrings are lab grown, those diamonds are rocks, and I know exactly what it took for my brother to make this chasunah.

My head sinks deep into my pillow. But wait, it’s not my pillow, really not, I don’t recognize it. Something strange is going on. My throat feels weird, almost numb, and my breath is sticky. Oh, of course it’s sticky, there’s a mask on my face. An oxygen mask. And I’m hooked up to machines, and something is tickling my brain, it’s coming to me, I think. It hurts to think, my mind is all groggy, but I am in a hospital, definitely, and gluuumpbbb, I am so dizzy.

I drift off again. Sleep is so nice. I see flamingos and diamond earrings and toddlers and Dini, Chavi, Dobbie, Shiri, and then I hear Pinchas’s voice.

“Friedman from the lumberyard. The mother is a Moses?”

Okay, I may not know what’s going on with me or who I even am, but I know Freeda Moses Friedman. Very well. Freeda Friedman is in my swimming group. I meet her twice a week. I get to hear firsthand what an incredible bochur her son is. What an incredible girl her daughter is. What an incredible guy her husband is. What an incredible house they live in, and how incredible every last thing in her life is.

I also see her applying incredibly pink lipstick when we’re out of the pool. And put on her incredibly curly sheitel. And I hear her regale our group with all her incredible segulos tales and her horror over all her incredible ayin hara findings. And be mezakeh us with the incredible tefillah opportunity when she hands out her Tehillim mechulak booklets every Tuesday and Thursday after we swim.

Freeda Friedman is incredibly weird. Even her name is weird. Like, if your name is Freeda and you marry someone Friedman, it doesn’t take much to figure out that you should start going by your middle name, or at least by Fraidy.

“He learns by Rav Shimon Levi,” I hear Pinchas saying, and that’s when a little fuzzy memory surfaces. I’m in a hospital gown, this same one that I’m wearing now, and Pinchas is finishing a call with Rabbi Avraham Meir Taub, who was the rav of our shul until he moved to Lakewood five years ago. Rabbi Taub wants us to inquire about a boy for Dini, and I tell Pinchas, “Please, not now, tell him to call back in two weeks.”

But in that fuzzy memory Pinchas is hyped up, says he’ll take care of this, I should leave it up to him — which is absurd, because he can’t take care of this, he’ll make one phone call and get distracted by a shiur, totally forget to follow up. He won’t even know what to ask. Whom to ask. This is my department, and he relies on me to get the job done.

And now I realize whose son this boy is, and I don’t care where he learns. I don’t care if he’s Moshe Rabbeinu with Elon Musk’s net worth. He’s not marrying my daughter. I’m not becoming Incredibly Incredible Freeda Friedman’s mechuteneste.

Pinchas is engrossed in his conversation, but he’s wasting his breath. I raise my hand weakly to catch his attention, but he’s oblivious, he doesn’t notice I’m awake.

He goes right on with his inquiries. “Right, so I made a few preliminary calls, and his learning and middos definitely checked out. I want to find out about his personality. Would your nephew be honest with you? Would he feel comfortable if I’m on the line while you talk to him? Someone threw in a word that this boy is super refined — which is a great thing, don’t get me wrong. I just want to make sure he isn’t withdrawn. You know how people use euphemisms when they give information?”

Whoa, did he get shidduch research training while I was sleeping? How does he even know what to ask? What I would’ve asked?

In any case, he’s wasting his breath and that innocent nephew’s time. I try to clear my throat, but it doesn’t go.

And in a flash, I am fully alert. It all comes hurtling back, the when and the where and the why.

I’ve just had surgery on my vocal cords, to remove a polyp.

And for the duration of my recovery, I may not utter a sound.

(Excerpted from Calligraphy: Pesach 5785; Mishpacha Issue 1057)