We started strong, mostly because I insisted that if I was going to suffer through American Dream, we had to do something I enjoyed. So we reserved an escape room for the early morning.

Early morning isn’t a problem for Yekkehs. We were there half an hour early and parked in the spot suggested by the escape room. It was three stories up, nowhere near any actual entrance to the mall. I’d decided that we’d travel light and leave the jackets in the car. It was all cool. Really, really cool. Turns out that had we been at the top of a mountain, we would not, in fact, have cast off our coats.

Timely as ever, we escaped our room with seven minutes to spare and not a single plan of what to do next except, perhaps, spend some exorbitant sums on some brief excursions. Eventually we settled on Bubble Planet.

“Excuse me,” a nice, frum lady asked me as we waited to get in. “What exactly is this place?”

I shrugged. “It’s eighteen dollars per kid,” was all I could offer. “We were sold on that.”

“Oh, for sure,” she said, getting in line behind me.

Bubble Planet, we discovered, was a varied place without any real explanation of its mission statement. If something was round, it was there. We walked through a room filled five feet high with enormous balloons, then found ourselves at a massive ball pit the size of a swimming pool.

I tried stepping into the pit to be a good sport, then remembered that I’m too old to have fun, and planted myself on a bench beside my husband. “They should put up a sign near this place, warning people to empty their pockets beforehand,” he remarked. “Imagine losing your keys in that ball pit.”

“No one’s going to be that careless,” I laughed, watching my kids throw balls at each other. Even my teenage son was getting into it, which was a pleasure to see; he’s more of the studious type. It’s so nice that he can still be a kid sometimes.

We continued on through the… museum? exhibit?… whatever it was. Then we wandered around the mall a little more. Maybe we’d rent those riding toys. Maybe we’d head home. Were two events in a day enough to make this a memorable family outing?

As we pondered, my son suddenly said, “Where’s my phone?”

I didn’t think anyone was going to pickpocket his low-tech flip phone, which wasn’t even capable of receiving photos — and that left only one place his phone might be.

I returned to Bubble Planet with my son and older daughter. The woman at the entrance didn’t even listen to our entire explanation, just waved us in. I’m sure this must happen often. They really should have signs near the ball pit.

The kids dove back in, though my son was pretty sure finding the phone was an impossible feat.

“I’ll buy a new phone,” he kept saying.

I would have none of it. I sat on a bench and glowered reprovingly every time it looked like they might be trying to have fun in the pit. We were on a mission! They moved slowly. Very slowly. I called the phone over and over, but the volume was turned low and the ball pit was loud and wild.

They needed my help. I checked the balloon room. No phone. I peered in some of the cubbies at the ball pit. No luck. I glanced back at the ball pit. My son stopped throwing balls at his sister and rearranged his face into an expression of extreme regret.

Fine. My husband was wrangling the little ones somewhere in the packed mall; the least I could do was get into the ball pit.

Well. Every single ball in that pit had the exact same shell and shape as the phone. Plus, it was impossible to walk or even sweep my legs around to try to find something unfamiliar. I kept searching, but I finally understood why my son had long given up.

As a last-ditch effort, I pulled up Amar Rabi Binyamin on my phone. I’m a little too Yekkish to buy into magic spells, which is how it always sounded to me. But I was also surrounded by a million plastic balls, and magic was all I had.

I recited the words, remembered that the whole point was to give tzedakah, and pledged $18 to a school that kept emailing me. Then I called the phone. It didn’t magically float in midair in the center of the pit, so I decided it was a wash.

“Let’s get out of here,” I told the kids. “We’ll order a new phone on the way home.”

Thirty seconds later, as I crossed the last stretch of the pit, something oval and metal hit my lower leg. I picked up the phone nestled in the balls in front of me. Opened it to be sure it was my son’s and saw 16 missed calls from Mommy.

Texted my husband, “We owe Rabi Meir Baal HaNeis BIG-TIME.”

I donated $36 to the school dinner under my son’s name. Then let my five-year-old ride a toy because she was sobbing, “I just want to play!” and according to my girl math we had $150 to spare, now that we’d found the phone.

Finally it was time to go. Waze informed me that we’d be home around seven, just in time for bed. We’d gotten a full day.

“Great day,” my husband remarked.

“It was,” I agreed. It’s amazing, really, how much fun you could have if you were willing to pay exorbitant sums for it.

In the car, when I asked my kids for their favorite part of the day, they all called out the same thing. “The ball pit!”

Except for the five-year-old, who announced, “Every single part of it,” her angst forgotten.

Every tiny stressor of the day had faded with the sun, and every person in that car had deemed it a success.

And truthfully, that’s always my American dream.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 980)