I

don’t want to pretend that my family is good at the Chol Hamoed thing. We’re not. We’re very good at discussing Chol Hamoed, and this year, the four-day Chol Hamoed allowed us many enjoyable wintertime conversations about the possibilities — Now we can finally go to Niagara and stay overnight — but of course we did none of those things.

We followed our personal minhag, which involves coming home from shul and sitting on the couch and discussing options, and slowly, as midmorning gives way to noon and then noon fades to afternoon, checking them off, and marking them as irrelevant: The Mega-Maze is closed for renovations, Imax is about bugs, uchhh, it’s too cold for the ropes course, too warm for snow-tubing.

I also don’t want to pretend that we’re one of those well-informed Chol Hamoed families — the ones who know how to get the group rates and coupons and cheap tickets if you order by 6 p.m. the day before. We don’t know about any specials, and the promo codes don’t ever work for us. We consistently pay the highest amount possible and then, at Maariv, we look away when people say, “Ah, you went to the zoo, you got those family-pack tickets?”

Wherever we end up going, the parking lot is full and we end up circling as we play a Chol Hamoed game called “Who Can Spot Someone Who Looks Like They’re Leaving.”

Anyhow, so this Chol Hamoed has come and gone, and baruch Hashem we enjoyed the family time and togetherness and even managed some pictures during a brief spell of genuine happiness.

And besides coming home with stamps on our hands and a pounding headache that’s part carousel music, part arcade beeping, and part thudding bowling balls, in my brain, I came home with a metaphor.

One afternoon, we managed a free trip. (If you’re on top of things, you can slip one of those over your children between the very not free ones.) The weather was nice, and we were in a public park, the younger children reveling in the simple joy of the playground while the older ones did swing-pushing duty and felt heroic.

And then we played free-me. It’s sort of like hide-and-go-seek, except the hiders can creep out of their hiding places and free those who have already been caught by beating whomever is “it” back to base. In a scenic park, on a nice day, it works. It’s lots of fun for the children who get to play a game and also watch an overweight, middle-aged, overdressed father run, panting, in a vain attempt to beat a 12-year-old boy back to base and also hold his yarmulke in place.

Anyhow, I was it. And eventually, I found all of the children, except one. I looked behind the water fountain and under the bushes and scanned the perimeter of the park, but he wasn’t there. At any moment, I assumed, he would burst forth from wherever he was hiding and free everyone else and undo all my hard work.

But the minutes kept passing and he wasn’t coming and I couldn’t find him, and if not for the fact that the other children were giggling, clearly up-to-date on his location, I would have worried.

But l’maaseh, he was nowhere. I’d covered every inch of the park, checked behind, under, and in every possible place. There were no other families there, and other than a lone jogger circling the circumference of the park, there were no humans in sight.

And then I got it. The jogger in the blue shirt and cap was my son. Who’d been wearing a white shirt and no cap when the game had started.

The precocious young man had beat me at the game, since I’d been looking for him, flashes of his shirt or yarmulke, and, through switching clothing with his brothers and using a cap he’d found in the car, he’d ensured that I would never find him.

’Cuz I was looking for the wrong guy.

Nimshal alert. (Since we’re discussing my children, they’ve told me they don’t mind when I tell stories, but they don’t like when there’s a nimshal.)

Yitzchak Avinu was blind, but he was able to see through the guise of the son who’d switched his clothing, approaching with hairy arms but a gentle voice. The beged, as the seforim teach, didn’t succeed in being boged. The clothing did not betray Yaakov’s essence.

When you’re looking for someone or something, remember that the object or person for which you search may not appear as you imagine, anymore. You might have sent your child into the game wearing one set of clothing — the garb of a normal, happy, regular child — and then you can’t find him anymore, because the costume has changed. Now he wears labels, diagnoses, verdicts. But you can find him, still, if you ignore those trappings and look at the face. The eyes. Catch a glimpse of the essence and you’ll see that he or she hasn’t changed; it’s the same child with whom you started the game.

And once we’re on Chol Hamoed trips, one more chinuch lesson. Bowling alley technology has really evolved. First it went from pencils and small charts to computers. That was fine. Then they made bumpers and smaller balls for little children. Okay, I can live with that.

But now, as I paid for the game, the woman explained to me that, using the computer, I could indicate which children needed bumpers, and the bumpers would rise just for them, so that they could play in the same game, on the same lane, as the older children.

Come on!

When we were children, little wimps used bumpers, but at least you were in a game with other wimps. You knew who you were. The big kids were a lane over. Now, you can play with big kids — against big kids — and have little rubber walls pop up for your turn and then smoothly disappear into the ground and allow you to compete. Not just compete, actually, but probably win, because the balls you roll are guaranteed to knock down a few pins, every single time.

I’m no pedagogue, but I wonder what kind of children we’ll raise if every time they face a lane with ridges at either end, we’ll cover up their errant turns by pressing a button, and then press another button to hide that evidence as well.

And one more question: Who said parents can’t enjoy Chol Hamoed trips?

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 707. Yisroel Besser may be contacted directly at besser@mishpacha.com