I had been speaking with this new friend for just a few minutes before the question came up. It was a sunny summer Shabbat afternoon at a Teaneck park. I had just finished playing chess with some kids and was speaking with one of the parents. He asked me my name, where I lived, where I davened. Then he asked if I was married, and after I assured him of my solitary state, he went into shadchan mode.

Being single in the Jewish community is apparently one of the greatest shandas imaginable. It is obvious why the Upper West Side, where hip young Jewish singles flock and shell out for extravagant rents, has become known as "the Jewish meat market."

Speaking as an older mother in a very young Jewish community of 20- and 30-something parents, I find myself much outside of the box. It is not exactly by choice that I have a late-in-life child. Some things simply happen, and others are meant to be in a way that is indefinable. Parenting is a tough job with a partner and support system, and 100 times harder flying solo.

I had already raised three children to emancipation and lost my life partner when a situation arose that led me to motherhood yet again. It was an unusual occurrence and like many women in their 40s, I had long stopped actively thinking of babies and caring for them. Or perhaps not, for the year that my husband died I had the opportunity to adopt yet another infant. I did not give it much thought, for the decision had already been made by some unfulfilled mothering instincts that were still inside my heart. I was reaching the end of my 40s when I adopted my son, the age at which my neighbors were already grand-parenting or at least, paying off college tuitions.

If the ability to share and chronicle the story of Jewish life in Hudson and Bergen counties began 75 years ago with the establishment of The Jewish Standard as our area’s principal Jewish paper, then the beginnings of Jewish organizational life in Teaneck, perhaps its leading community, also then began with the establishment of the Jewish Center of Teaneck as the community’s first Jewish house of worship.

Joy Zacharia Appelbaum notes in "The History of the Jews of Teaneck" (1977) that the center began with High Holy Day services in 1933. Its wandering but uninterrupted development took a path of progress with the congregation’s first home in Israel Doskow’s art studio on Elm Street, then in a store across from the municipal green, onward to the Masonic Hall (the former residence of Bernard and Minna Lippman) on Monterey Avenue, and after that to the state troopers house on Queen Anne Road.

When the hotel operator rang to wake me at 3:50 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 27, it took me a few seconds to understand that I was not in bed in Fair Lawn, but at the Team Lifeline hotel in Hollywood, Fla.

"This is your wake-up call," the voice said.

"I just started dreaming," I complained, still half asleep.

I am not an early riser. Three in the morning is more likely the time I will go to sleep than the hour I would wake up. But as I shook the sleep from my brain, I realized that the dream wasn’t over; it was just beginning.

I am on my way to Israel on El Al for a bar mitzvah of one of our Chabad members. It’s 11:30 p.m. and, along with 450 other passengers, I am trying to get as comfortable as possible for the long flight to the Holy Land. My mind is reeling; I still can’t believe what happened to me just a few hours ago.

I was regularly attending services daily, saying Kaddish in memory of my mother. JetBlue Flight 46 from Orlando to JFK, connecting to El Al to Israel presented a challenge.

The connecting flight schedules were very tight, so I arranged with my brother, Rabbi Aaron Levi Konikov, to take me from JFK to his Roslyn, N.Y. Chabad Center for afternoon services.