Late-Night Learning

At 1:30 a.m. I decided I was tired enough to close the mag and get some sleep. But just as I stood up, Shlomo walked out of my boys’ room.
Did I say my big boys were in yeshivah? Well, except for Shlomo. At 17, Shlomo had left — or been asked to leave — five different yeshivos. He was currently managing a pizza store.

Nashim b’mai zachyin? What gives women merit? Not sending their sons off to manage pizza stores, that’s for sure. But… Hashem, I wanted to send Shlomo to learn Torah! I tried to! I’d davened for it from the moment I found out You’d planted him inside me. But You created him with difficulties in learning. By the time he finally understood his learning, it was too late. The damage had been done.

Shlomo had come home in a foul mood just before Yom Tov began. A police officer had fined him for littering.

“It wasn’t littering!” he said now as I stood up to head to bed. “I dropped my cigarette butt on the ground outside tachanah merkazit. A million people do that every day. What right did he have to fine me? Uch, I’m so annoyed, I can’t sleep.”