I meet Doppelgangers all the time. At my age, everyone you meet, fits into a category of people that you already know. There are just not that many people in the world. This mother of two girls who I see at school is my Aunt Marla who has two boys. They are about 20 years apart from each other, but it's definitely her all over again.
I see Leah Post (a highschool/college student in Seattle) in almost every highschool girl.
My neighbor is my old friend Tova Cabessa (not really, just reminds me so much of her). I'm still waiting to meet all of you guys, I'll let you know when I do. It's great, when I meet someone new, I already feel like I know them. The problem is when I start treating them like the other person...
Someone came to my door with cookies on Erev Shabbos, and I thought "Numie Skaist, ok I know you." And then Menucha said, "You look like my old PreK teacher; Morah Numie." So I'm not the only one. Oh, the funny part was that she answered, "Believe it or not, I KNOW Numie Skaist."
Not sure if I mentioned this part yet, as my brain is still in Seattle. Did I mention how much I love the people here? I may be feeling extremely mental lately, but it has nothing to do with Seattle, it's probably the unsettledness of my house and my kids. Anyway, the people are so wonderful. Every family has at least 7 kids and most have more. This woman on my block who is skinny as anything (besides for her big pregnant belly) has 11 kids bH. Her kids are little teeny pishers and so cute. Her sister who lives under me as six and she's my age. Their other sister has only 5, but two of them are less than a year apart and another is only 16 months younger than that. They come from a family of 14. I've always wanted to see how big families work and now I'm right in the middle of things. I'm just in awe of these mothers. How DO they do it. On Shabbos I met a Bubby and a Zaidy walking with their new baby grandson. Later the bubby introduced herself, she's the mother, not bubby and she has ten others at home. My whole image of her relaxing with the Zaidy and enjoying their baby grandson flew away.
On the last day of Shavous, we heard a rumor that there was a brochos party at someone's house. All the girls all over the block started talking about it. I kept trying to find the source, is it true, how does everyone know? The girls said yeah, this is how you find out about things.
So I took my girls at 6pm and slowly we picked up girls all along the way. They were just walking and started walking with us. We had a humongous group by the time we got there. I just looked around at my shmoozing girls, surrounded by beautiful, frum girls and wanted to sing my praises to Hashem. I can't believe a place like this exists! And it does, and we live here! A place that has such a strong bond between all the frum girls, they all know eachother and hang out and are really close.
Today, Thursday, we had 3 girls over doing homework with Menucha. Then 3 little kids came knocking at 3 separate times asking if it's a good time for them to come over. My downstairs 7 year old boy saw everyone coming in, so I invited him in too and he hung out past dinner. The old joke is real here -- where we sit down at the table for dinner and say, "Hey, who's kid are you?"
It's overwhelming but it's something I've always wanted, so I need to work on it. I always had this image of being the home that everyone comes to. Having a swinging front door open to all the neighborhood kids. That was the image I had before I got married. Suddenly I'm thrown into it, my door really is always open, nobody remembers to close it. It's down a flight of stairs so I can't keep track of it being closed. So yes, I feel very stressed out most of the time - but it's because there's a lot we need to get used to.
My children need to get used to leaving the house 3 times a day and walk about ten minutes to school. Penina needs to learn that this happens often and she's going to have to sit still and enjoy the walk. Hubs need to learn that when he comes home from a long, hot day of work, the house will be full of children who are not his.
I need to learn that there'll be a mess that needs to be cleaned up every single day. And if I want people to continue to use my house as a hangout, I need to have more food that people can eat (they all keep cholov yisroel and some keep pas yisroel) and have more games geared towards a group.
Penina needs to learn how to be a person on her own, without living and breathing in Mommy all day long.
And the girls need to learn when homework is. They were super excited for the first two days, but I know burnout is coming because gosh, this a humongous amount of homework! They have papers and reviews of every topic that they learned in school. Seattle totally spoils its' students. No homework and tests is not reality anywhere else in the world. This school has serious homework.
My eyes are closing as usual, since apparently Penina needs to learn that 5am is not an appropriate time to wake up.
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