So what are you looking for?

As a parent, the one question that has been known to strike terror in my heart is "What is your child looking for?" Earlier on I would earnestly try to give an answer to this question. Most people's eyes glazed over. There is surely no short way to answer this question.

As I began to look at some of the young people for whom I was redding shidduchim, and at my children's friends and at my friends' children, and observing just how close the person they actually married was to what they told me they were looking for, I formulated an answer to use myself to the question.

Now when I am asked I answer: I'll tell you when they are standing under the chupah. I think it's a fair answer.

You see, I have seen the tall girl who wouldn't go out with a boy under six feet whose husband is two inches shorter than she is. I have seen the boy who only dated a size 8 and whose wildly beloved wife is a size 18, and always was. I have seen the girl who wouldn't date an out of town boy, including New Jersey, who now resides in her husband's home in Australia. There's a saying that applies here: "Man tracht, und Gott lacht." Man plans and God laughs. Or maybe we should remember that "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray."