Dating Today

This issue is more common than many may think. We speak about our actual family and our work family. I’m still in touch with members of my work family, and I haven’t worked with them in five years! I interviewed, hired, and trained them—and, most importantly, spent 35 hours a week with them. I was able to rely on them when I needed help, and they were able to count on me when the time came for it. We know each other’s children and siblings from everyone visiting the office. I have a picture on my phone that I love looking at: my daughter, at two years old, watching her iPad in one of the visitors’ chairs in my office, with two boys looking over her shoulder. The boys were the sons of one of my staff member’s children—from a very Chassidish family. I guess it was a no-school day. My daughter was watching Cocomelon, but these boys had never watched Cocomelon. All members of my staff laughed. It was simple nursery rhymes, but these boys had never seen these graphics. Their eyes were glued to the screen.

Dear Goldy,
The issue I’m writing about isn’t unique, so I’m hoping you or your readers will be able to help and advise or give me some chizuk. It’s not complicated. It’s a story as old as time (I know you like Disney).

Dear Goldy,

Years ago, a girl wrote about how devastated she was that the guy she dated and liked broke up with her and later on ended up getting engaged to her cousin.

Again, I must break into my usual order of articles because of something that has caught my attention in the last week. It’s a good thing I don’t write a chapter of a novel each week, because then many of you would be annoyed that I broke into our regularly scheduled chapter “for this?” Yes, “for this” — because I think it’s important.

I have very strong feelings about helping singles and have been vocal (and literate) about that as well. Throughout the last year, I took it upon myself to do more than just write about singles, the hardships of dating, responding to emails, helping a single (and marrieds no matter the age) laugh, providing chizuk… I took it upon myself to make it personal.

I was daydreaming the other day and a song popped into my head, thankfully it was not a song from Cocomelon. It was the words to one of Abie Rotenberg’s wonderful songs, an oldie but a goodie: The Shadchan. I remember listening to it when I was nine or ten, not fully knowing what it meant. My parents owned an ’87 Buick, not a ’67 Chevy. But I pictured a younger version of my father driving down long mountain roads (I only knew from going up to the country back then) and then approaching the George Washington Bridge toll booths. I imagined my father going to my maternal grandparents’ apartment, taking my mother out on a date. Only when I was older did I fully understand the song and how it came full circle. Baruch Hashem, I’ve been lucky to live this long to see how everything is cyclical.