My husband and I made plans to visit our family’s kevarim, something we actually look forward to each Elul. Mount Moriah is where my paternal grandparents, great-grandparents, and great aunts and uncles are buried. It’s a beautiful place, as cemeteries go, and since it’s close to Newark Airport, we enjoy watching the planes take off and land alongside the freeway where we drive.

The best part is that the cemetery is located an hour or so from Lakewood, which means that we get to spend Shabbos with our precious children and grandchildren. Some of my granddaughters and I have a wonderful tradition which started back when I was a child. In those early childhood years, my father worked long hours and was hardly ever home during the week. In fact, family legend has it that when I was three years old, I didn’t even know who my father was. As the story goes, one day, while my mother was giving me a bath, she named all the people in our family who loved me. When she was up to the second cousins, I stopped and asked her about “that man.” My mother looked at me and said, “What man?” to which I answered innocently, “You know, the man with the glasses who lives here?” My mother incredulously sputtered, “You mean Daddy?”

Shabbos was over, and I went around the house putting everything away. I folded the tablecloth, put the dining room table pads away, cleaned the Shabbos leichter, and then started the dishwasher. I glanced over at the fridge and couldn’t help but notice the readout lights on the front panel, a glaring reminder that the Shabbos mode was indeed broken. It was fun having a light in my fridge for the short time that the Shabbos mode was working, but what can you do? It was just plain broken. The bells and whistles are officially gone, and it isn’t worth the time or money to bring them back. Broken. Now my fridge will always remain in the dark.  

My thoughts turn to other dark and broken things. Like broken engagements or broken women who would like to remarry. I watch the process of my single women friends who so want to remarry but aren’t finding it to be an easy process. A shadchan calls them with an idea. They go out on a date or talk on Zoom. Oh, how they want it to work out and how they try making different personalities and lifestyles fit together. So often, they are unsuccessful.

A friend called a month or so ago to share an idea with me. I’d like to say she’s a good friend, even though we rarely speak to one another. Our conversations flow naturally and easily as if we’ve known each other for many years when, in fact, it’s been far shorter than that. The topics vary, and who knows what they are about. But one thing I can say for certain is there is a common theme threading through each one of them.

My friend and I are roughly the same age and from the same generation. I can’t speak for her, but like most of my friends, I had a stay-at-home mother and a father who worked hard building a business. We children grew up, got married and raised a family. The women I know worked hard, too. Many of my friends are baalei teshuva, and as we parented our children and worked in our chosen fields, we began a journey the likes we had never traveled before.

Then our children were married off, one by one, and as we faced retirement – or when we suddenly realized the nest was officially empty – we weren’t quite sure where we were going. Still, many of us were fired up and excited, all the while curious as to where we were headed.

It was a Thursday afternoon last fall, and I was sitting at my computer with thoughts of making Shabbos. I had planned to start my preparations ahead of time and made a mental list of what to make Thursday morning. However, as the sun rose higher in the sky, the kitchen remained in the dark while I sat in the den with my fingers tapping the keyboard, happily absorbed in sending emails to contacts near and far. I knew what was waiting for me in the other room but chose to ignore the signals my mind was sending me – the same way our grandson purposefully tunes out the repeated reminders from his parents when they tell him to take a shower.

I guess it’s time to admit that I’m not the biggest fan of cooking. I enjoy making food for my family and other guests, but I like eating out and prefer picking up takeout on the way home. There are some weeks when I’ll cook a different meal every night, and other times when that just doesn’t happen. I do have some guilty feelings about it, but thankfully, my husband doesn’t feel that his wife should spend any more time in the kitchen than she wants to.

We inherited our refrigerator from the previous owners of our condo. Okay, so it wasn’t the latest and greatest. It didn’t take up one entire wall in our kitchen and couldn’t hold enough food for 15 families. But it was good enough for us.

Recently, I decided that I wanted to start using the icemaker and dug out the manual that came along with it. I figured I’d read the booklet while I was at it and stumbled upon something amazing: My fridge has a Shabbos mode! Well, how do you like that? I practically jumped for joy. This discovery was like finding money in the backyard. And all along I thought my old appliance was far from being state of the art. I thought it didn’t compare to the other new and gleaming appliances that stood boldly and beautifully in my kitchen. Who knew?

I don’t ever remember having a well-lit refrigerator. I was used to not being able to clearly identify the many contents that were contained inside. I kept the light bulbs unscrewed at all times so I wouldn’t have to remember to unscrew them before Shabbos. Well, no more. I simply press two buttons simultaneously, and viola, the readout says “Sb” and I’m good to go. I don’t know what to do with myself.

Those wonderful daughters of mine are going about their business working and living….and shopping. They shop more often than I did at their age. And I must say, they are far savvier than I ever was. They always manage to find the most beautiful, aidel, and fashionable items. They never seem to mind the constant changes in styles that happen around them, like the fact that it’s virtually impossible these days to find a decent pair of shoes.

I’ve spent the last two years unsuccessfully looking for Shabbos shoes. I used to shop at this wonderful place that had rows and rows of lovely shoes. It was a discount store that sold quality, well-made shoes in all sizes. I used to go there at least twice a year and never had difficulty finding something just right. I often felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store happily coming home with my large shopping bag filled with enough goodies to last me for the season. But with each passing year, the styles changed, and I couldn’t wear the shoes they were selling, even if I liked them, which I didn’t.