Thank Heaven, For Little...

Wifey's orthodox cousin Yechiel lives in Baltimore, where is the moshgiach, or supervising rabbi for Empire Poultry. He and his wife have 2 sons and 2 daughters, and Wifey and I see the oldest, Ephraim, every year or so.

Ephraim is a fine young man, who studied Finance at a Baltimore area college, and works as a consultant to a mining company venture capital group. He was explaining what he does last night, and lost me after 5 miutes.

Anyway, Ephraim was married and has 2 lovely girls, who are 13 and 9. Ephraim and his wife Malke divorced a few years ago a VERY rare occurrence in the orthodox community. But, they remain dedicated parents to their darling girls, and Ephraim brings the young ones to Florida each year on vacation. This is the third time they've stayed with us.

Last night we took them to one of the few Glatt kosher places in South Dade -- the Oasis at the U. We shared sandwiches and conversation, and then walked around the lake. Ephraim and the girls live in Brooklyn, and really savor the palm trees and other exotic vegetation commonplace to us here in the Tropics. One of the girls remarked "It just smells so great here..."

We came back to the house, and the girls watched "Hocus Pocus," an old favorite of our Ds.

Wifey and I became wistful -- we just savored the times our Ds grew up. It was absolutely lovely to have young girls in the house again.

The only problem is the dogs. Like many orthodox families, dogs aren't part of the scene. The girls enjoy our 3 dogs (D1 graciously left the granddog with us for awhile), but are a tad afraid of them, too. Still, when the dogs quieted down, and the girls petted them while watching the movie, it was a beautiful scene in our family room.

Today, Ephraim is off to Lion Country with his girls. He's such a terrific Dad -- dedicated to showing them a terrific time. They adore him.

They'll be back later, and Wifey and I will go hunt some more glatt kosher food -- our other option is our old friend Moshe's snack bar at the JCC.

D2 turns 20 in 3 days. D1 is 23. They're women. We adore them. But, oh, the days when we raised young girls...