Vil’amsburg Diaries: Erev Shabbos

The house smells like a Friday afternoon. Ajax, some unidentified scent, and delicious Shabbos food. The washing-machine spins noisily, the little kids fight over a coloring book and the older kids fight over which of the younger ones are right. Breindy is doing last minute chores. Suri is in the kitchen making matzoh balls. Ach, she’s a blessing. Her husband will love her. I just wish we can find Nuchem a girl, so we can find Suri the right husband. Nuchem is the oldest so he has to be first to find a shidduch, then we’ll find one for Suri. Sheindy serves me some fresh potato kugel. She’s almost bas mitzvah and she likes to act like one of the big ones. “The kugel is delicious,” I tell Breindy. It always is. She has this secret recipe that involves a lot of black pepper.

Fridays are not bad. If only they had been longer. I mean the winter Fridays–the summer Fridays are too long. This week is one of the shortest Fridays in the year. The Winter Solstice is about to happen this week. Had I been a goy I might have been an astronomer, the celestial bodies fascinated me as far back as I can remember. Actually, I can do that as a yid too. Many gedolim were alchemists and astronomers in their spare time. Didn’t the Gra know more than modern day doctors just from studying while in the bathroom?

On Fridays the office closes early so everyone can prepare for Shabbos. Shabbos starts before 4 pm this week, and there’s so much to do before the siren goes off. Nuchem is going to be home this week. Oy, I won’t fight with him. It’s not worth it. So he sleeps late Shabbos morning. So he misses the prayers. So he’s fresh. Big deal. So it will bother me a little. Or a lot. Actually, I can’t take it. I wish he would stay in Yeshiva. Does he enjoy torturing us? After every time that he’s home Breindy cries. Granted, it doesn’t take much to get her cry, but there should be some joy in reuniting with a son. An oldest son. Gott in Himmel, give me the strength.

Someone is in the bathroom taking a shower. I need the Head and Shoulders. It’s not easy to live with so many kids with just one bath. It is two hours to the z’man and I long to immerse myself in the steaming hot mikveh. Berel is already there. He always comes before me and leaves after me. He is a good man, Berel, being in the mikveh so long means that you have to pass along the gossip you heard before everyone else came. Mikveh nei’es. I wonder who the government caught this week. Lord have mercy, lately the agencies descend on Brooklyn right and left. Why can’t they leave us alone? We don’t kill. We don’t rob banks. I mean, not with a gun, you know. Anti-semitten. All of them. Especially the Jews who work there. They’re so hard to deal with. Not that I would know.

With shampoo, soap, and undergarments in the shopping bag I go to the mikveh. Shmuly, my nine-year-old, wants to come with me. I tell him he can go when he’s ten. I’m not sure if I should take such young kids there. Other kids his age go. There are always little six or seven-year-olds, but I want to keep my kids pure. My father used to take me to the mikveh when I was five, but make me wait outside. I remember peeking in and seeing the naked tumult. It must have affected me for the rest of my life. Big huge people with long black hair all over their naked bodies.

The dressing room is packed. That’s the only trouble with short Fridays. Everyone comes at the same time. Finding a few hooks to unload the cloths is barely manageable. Sitting down is impossible. The main event is taking place in the next room. Two large tubs filled with water and men with a light film of grease on top. The right tub, or mikveh, is lukewarm. That’s where the kids go. And most of the men too. The one on the left is what I live for. The piping hot water. The steam. The gossip. It’s all in there. Berel is sitting on the steps. I notice his hairy back.

I turn first to the shower. A sign tells you to shower before dipping in the mikveh, but had everyone listened there would be no hair and muck floating around. I will take a shower again after the mikveh. That’s when I really get pure.

Someone did a shidduch this week. Three people had babies. I saw that on the signs taped to the door outside. A little “Happy Notice” tucked between “We are Happy to Announce” and “Tzadik Comes to Town”. The door serves as a bulletin board for the headlines, the mikveh gives the rest of the story. Someone mentioned what he heard on the radio this week. Zalmy hushes him. “There are kids around”. Kids shouldn’t know that listening to the radio is taken lightly. It was banned eons ago. Way before there was the Internet.

Soon Berel is going to relate another gripping story about the woman who found her husband talking to goyim on the Interrrrnet. I should go home.

By now the house smells mostly of the food. The candles are in their place resting at the foot of the table. We light thirteen candles in addition to the two oil wicks. Two for Breindy and me, ten for each of our kids, and one extra for the week that Tzivi was born. Breindy had her Friday afternoon and no one remembered to light the candles that week. I just lit the candles. Soon I’ll say ‘PEH’ and thus blow out the candles. One shouldn’t just blow out fires – something to do with the underworld and shin-dalets.

Poor Breindy. Women her age usually have one huge candelabra for all those candles. Cha-Leyah certainly has a huge one. Even if she only has four kids. I should start saving up for that. On the other hand, paying for Nuchem’s wedding is on the horizon. If only he’d act like a mentch so they’ll talk shidduchim for him.