Glad I kept my mouth shut!

I'm told that many fathers become hyper-observant of their daughter's habits when they (their daughters, that is) become 13 or 14.  We start looking for tell-tale signs of our little girl's interest in the opposite sex... and any sign of 'grappling hooks being tossed over the wall' by the local boys in the community.

That transition from 'little girl' to 'young woman' happens amazingly fast...nearly overnight, it seems!  And once a father notices a boy looking overly long in his daughter's direction, or worse, his daughter looking back... well, sleep becomes a fleeting, restless thing. 

The only person who might be able to understand the unsettled feeling that comes over fathers at this stage of life would be the owner of a shiny new Ferrari who is forced to park it on the street every night in a sketchy neighborhood.  The Ferrari itself is as blameless as it is beautiful.  But the world seems suddenly and unusually full of reckless drivers, vandals and thieves.

So it was with some disquiet [understatement alert] that I recently noticed that Ariella had taken up crocheting. 

For those who aren't from the 'Dati Leumi' crowd, a young girl acquiring that skill can indicate only one thing.  Young girls in our world don't crochet lace hankies or coasters to put under cold drinks.  No, they crochet kippot (yarmulkes)... and those kippot are intended for BOYS!

Even more troubling, instead of asking me to show her how to crochet... she'd asked my wife, Zahava!

[side note: Yes folks, I've known how to crochet since university.  In fact, a regular reader/commenter on this blog and her roommate (back when the three of us were students at Hebrew University) can take credit for having taught me how to crochet.  I had apparently gotten one too many terribly crocheted pastel-colored kippot from girls I was dating, and decided that enough was enough.  If I wanted a kippah that was a specific color, size or shape... I needed to learn to do it myself!]

Anyway, the fact that Ariella had sought out her mother to teach her how to crochet (even though I was equally available to teach her), did not bode well.  I smelled a boy. 

Ariella even came to me on a couple of occasions to show me the progress she was making on her first kippah and went through the motions of asking advice.  But I knew she was simply trying to see if she could get me to become a typical overbearing father full of intrusive questions.

But I didn't say a word.  I just smiled and complimented her on her work. 

Each day I watched as the kippah got bigger and the 'dugma' (pattern) began taking shape, but I kept my mouth shut.   However, I admit to taking special pains to see who was watching Ari when she was hanging around in the crowd of young people at synagogue after Shabbat services.

Finally, this past week I noticed that she'd finished working on the kippah... but it was nowhere to be seen.  She'd given it to someone!  It had been far to small for me (my kippot tend to be somewhat bigger due to my, ahem, receding hairline), but I also didn't see any boys in the community walking around wearing that dark blue kippah with the band of green design around the edge... and let me tell you, I looked!

Then on Friday night when we got home from synagogue and it was time to bless the children, I took Gilad's bowed head between my hands and began reciting "May you be blessed like Ephraim and Menasheh...".  But when I opened my eyes, I found myself staring down at the dark blue kippah Ariella had crocheted... sitting proudly on her brother's head.

Boy am I glad I kept my mouth shut!