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Home
and Family
The Empty Nest and the
Big Pot
There is absolutely no such thing as an empty nest
syndrome in our society. Having heard so much about
this phenomenon over the years, I was duly anxious
about the approach of the day when all or most of
the children would have married and settled off
somewhere on their own. Now that the time is here,
I can reliably report that there is no such thing.
Maybe in America children go off to far away cities
or their jobs take them to distant places, but in
Jerusalem the Golden and Bnei Brak the City of
Torah, we find our children places in projects at a
maximum distance of twenty minutes from the old
nest. Mostly we choose from Beitar, Beit Shemesh
and Kiryat Sefer. Some are beginning to brave Tel
Zion or Elad and one may go as far as Ashdod. A
forty minute drive to those of us who used to drive
an hour to and from work in the old country doesn't
seem too disturbing. None of my contemporaries can
be found sitting home alone, depressed and
rejected. In short, the little birds that flew out
of the nest find their way back home with the
greatest of ease and in the course of time, bring
more baby birds to fill up the nest even more.
I recently attended a meeting in the City Hall for
the purpose of discussing the proposed joint
addition of rooms to every apartment in my
building. My younger neighbors smilingly approached
me with the thought that, "Of course, you need lots
less room now that almost all of your children are
out of the house." Actually, said I, I find that I
need more bedrooms now than when they were small. I
could put three young daughters in a triple bunk
bed, but now each one has a husband and, bli
ayin hora, some children, and the bunk bed
business just won't work any more. My upstairs
neighbor, who is at a similar stage in life,
purported that she wants to extend the borders of
her living room because the size of the table that
was once large enough for the whole family is no
longer adequate for when what-should- be-the-empty-
nest is full to oveflowing. The upshot is that we
two older ladies were more enthusiastic about
adding on space than the younger people at the
meeting.
To be sure, there are some quiet times in between
the Shabbosim and Yomim Tovim and the bein
hazmanim, when the house seems a little calmer.
But a little serenity at this point is necessary to
rest up for the next event. My co-worker, Chana,
reports that they were enjoying a bit of peace and
quiet when one daughter produced a new member of
the family. In her house, this translates to
receiving that whole family for an extended period
of recuperation. Two weeks later, her daughter-in-
law also needed the same service and she had to
juggle an extra group of people into her schedule.
That was followed by the next-to-last-but-two
getting married. She reports that it was absolute
bliss to come home from that wedding with one son
walking with his father and a young teenage
daughter at her side. She is now enjoying another
short period of calm before the next `storm,'
kein yirbu.
And what does all this have to do with the size of
your pots? The fact is that as the family shrank, I
started cooking during the week in those little one
liter or two liter pots that came with the sets we
got way back when. They were almost in new
condition. The sixes and eights that were used for
thirty years got pushed to the back. So now, along
comes a Shabbos and the amount of food just won't
fit into the eight liter pot. For a while, I kept
trying, and the soup and cholent kept
boiling over every Friday and making a mess of my
stove. I finally got smart and went out and got a
ten and a sixteen liter pot which I don't fill all
the way and my stove top stays sparkling while
Shabbos is cooking. During the week, it's back to
the miniatures again.
So the next time someone tries to frighten you with
visions of loneliness and despair, tell them to
take down the sixteen liter pot and put their empty
nest syndrome in it and cook on medium heat. Bon
appetit.
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