Everyone else there was either a parent or a child, leaving me stranded in no-man’s-land

MY

cousin Penina is five years old, tanned and sturdy, with big green eyes and tousled brown curls. Her default facial expression is slightly slack-jawed, which makes her look a little zoned out, but looks are, in fact, deceiving in her case. I learned that when I spent the first days of Succos with her family.

I like to think that as a 24-year-old single girl, I’m a pretty easy guest. Some might even say I’m useful: I entertain the kids; make decent kneidlach; run last-minute errands in the car (that I own and can drive unsupervised); can be brought up as a chesed project at the table when conversation runs dry. In fact — and I realize how this sounds — I sometimes wonder if it’s harder for me to be hosted than for my family to host me.

Don’t get me wrong; I am definitely grateful for the open invitation, and appreciate the work that goes into hosting even one guest. But all the same, a person needs peers, and after a few hours of that Succos, I started to miss mine. Everyone else there was either a parent or a child, leaving me stranded in no-man’s-land.

This fact eventually dawned on Penina. I spent a lot of time with her that Yom Tov, and after two-and-a-half days of nonstop play, she paused, turned to me, and observed, “You’re bigger than me.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

Penina nodded to herself. “How big are you?”

“I’m twenty-four.”

Penina blinked. I could almost see the little workers in her brain, busily inspecting her schema of “big girls.” Red alert! Red alert! A contradiction! She frowned. “So, are you a mommy?”

“No.”

Penina’s brow furrowed. “But you’re big,” she pointed out, in a tone I tried not to read as accusing.

“Yeah,” I said. “Not all big girls are mommies.”