Show Me How You See the World

I thought I knew what the highlight of Family Camp would be. Swimming in the Jordan River. Color War. Bingo for Prizes. Dinner under the stars.

I never imagined it would be thirty sheets of paper and a box of markers. The biggest surprise of the entire week turned out to be...our Family Art Exhibition.

About a month before Family Camp, I sent my children and grandchildren thirty simple drawing prompts. Draw your favorite animal… your family... your happiest memory... your favorite holiday. Draw yourself as a superhero. Draw your favorite sport.

Nothing fancy.

Truthfully, I wasn't looking for the next Picasso. (Although after seeing some of the artwork, I may have found one or two.) I simply wanted everyone - from my youngest grandchild to the oldest - to arrive at Family Camp already feeling like they belonged to one big family project.

As the month went by, pictures started arriving on my phone. "Look what I drew, Savta!"

Then something happened that I never expected. One evening, after Bingo for Prizes, instead of running off with their loot to play something else or heading to bed, the grandchildren came looking for paper and markers. Not because anyone told them to. Because they wanted to draw more pictures for the Exhibition.

They stayed up into the wee hours creating masterpieces. Or dragons. Or invisible superheroes. Or sports involving ironing boards.

Our Own Gallery

When Exhibition night arrived, we transformed a corner of the hotel lobby into our own little art gallery. Instead of organizing the pictures by artist, we displayed them by subject. Everyone's favorite animals together. Then everyone's happiest memories, everyone's families.

One by one, we wandered through our gallery. And that's when I understood something. I hadn't really asked them to draw pictures. Without realizing it, I had asked them, "Show me how you see the world."

And every single one answered differently.

One assignment was: Draw yourself as a superhero. Most drew themselves flying or showing amazing strength. One granddaughter handed me...a completely blank page. "What happened?" I asked. She grinned. "My superpower is invisibility."

Well...I laughed so hard I almost gave a Blue Ribbon to a blank piece of paper.

Another assignment: Draw your favorite holiday.

We admired beautiful pictures of Passover, Sukkot and Chanukah. Then my son picked up a drawing of a magnificent four-layer birthday cake. "What holiday is this?" he asked.

My granddaughter looked at him like the answer should have been perfectly clear. "My birthday. Obviously." You know what? She was right. Our birthday should be our favorite day.

Next: Draw your favorite sport. Soccer. Swimming. Basketball.

And then my daughter proudly showed us her pastel drawing. Blue sky. Three tiny stick figures, plus an ironing board. "What sport is THAT?" someone asked. "Skydive ironing."

We all laughed, but I looked it up. Apparently there really are people who jump out of airplanes carrying ironing boards and press clothes while falling through the sky.

Darlings, I don't know about you, but if I'm jumping out of an airplane, the wrinkles in my shirt are going to be the least of my worries.

One grandson decided that drawing thirty separate pictures was entirely too much work. So he cleverly squeezed almost every assignment onto one page. "That little dot is my dream house." "I couldn't draw my dog, Bingo, so I just wrote his name. And since my name starts with B, it also counts for the picture beginning with the first letter of my name. :-)"

I have to admit...his logic was flawless. One son did the same. He drew a landscape of mountains, river and trees. "My favorite animal is hiding in that dark spot." “Swimming is my favorite sport, but you can’t see me under the water.” “My favorite place is peaking out behind the trees.”

Then came one of my own pictures.

The assignment: Draw your happiest memory. I drew our family seated at the giant horseshoe-shaped table of Family Camp. The grandchildren crowded around.

Not one of them commented on the quality of the drawing. They each asked exactly the same question: "Which one is me?" "Where am I?"

I pointed. I pointed again. I kept pointing until every last grandchild had found his own face in the crowd around that table. Because children don't care whether a picture is beautiful. They want to know if they belong in it. And they do, every single one of them.

Finally...one picture stopped me in my tracks.

Envisioning Our Family

The assignment was simply: Draw your family. Most kids drew the people who live in their homes. 

One granddaughter titled hers, "My Family in 100 Years." She drew a picture frame filled with hundreds and hundreds of tiny circles. Not today's family. Tomorrow's. Children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren she hopes IY”H will one day fill her family tree.

Every picture in our gallery showed me how a child sees the world. But this one reminded me how far into the future a child can see. I looked at that drawing for a very long time. May Hashem bless her beautiful vision. May every one of those tiny circles become a real child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and beyond.

As the evening came to an end, we celebrated our exhibition with an ice cream reception.

I gathered every picture in a special binder. I’ll have to wait for the ones that were forgotten at home. Others have already announced they have more masterpieces to create. Apparently, our gallery is still accepting submissions.

I'm making them into a family book - not because every picture belongs in a museum, although a few probably do, but because one day these children will have grandchildren of their own. And I want them to remember not only what they drew...
...but how they once saw the world.

 

Worth Twenty-Five Points

Every summer, like many families, we have Family Camp.

There are people who spend months looking forward to Family Camp. They dream about the hikes. They get excited about the sports. They pack binoculars for spotting exotic animals.

I pack ibuprofen. 😂

Sabba is in charge of the important things. He organizes the rooms, packs the coolers, loads the car, figures out who is sleeping where, and somehow remembers to bring everything we forgot.

I have my own department.

I bring Band-Aids, sunscreen, snacks, little bags of cut-up carrots for every family's car ride... and ideas.

You see, I love Family Camp.

Not because I love hiking. I am not a hiker.

Not because I love sports. I am not a sportswoman.

And after the third monkey at the zoo, I have to admit that some of the exotic animals begin to look a little similar.

But I love Family Camp because everyone is together.

Family Magic

When your children grow up and have families of their own, having everyone in one place feels like a gift. There is something magical about waking up under the same roof, sitting around the same table, and hearing five different conversations happening at the same time.

I want the kids to have fun. Of course I do. I want them to run, laugh, play, explore, and make memories. But more than that, I want them to enjoy each other. I want the cousins to discover things about one another that they might not know.

Not just: "Who can throw a ball the farthest?" or "Who can finish the hike first?"

But:

"What makes you laugh every single time?"

"What is something you've always wanted to learn?"

"What is your happiest family memory?"

So I decided to create a game.

I made cards with fun and thoughtful questions on them. When dinner comes around, I am going to give 20 Color War points to any child who answers a question.

Because let's be honest... Conversation is wonderful. But Color War points? That's serious business.

I printed each question onto a card. And then I had another idea. I'm going to keep a little notebook and write down some of the answers. Because I have a feeling there will be answers I won't want to forget.

Years from now, nobody will remember who won the relay race. Nobody will remember who climbed the hill first. Nobody will remember if the cooler stayed cold enough.

But maybe we will remember that one grandchild wanted a pet dragon named Pickles. Or that someone's dream house needed a trampoline in every room. Or that the best smell in the world was fresh challah.

Those are the treasures.

The best memories are not always made on mountain trails

Sometimes they happen around a dinner table... one question at a time.

The Real Treasures

I was watching a news interview with a political expert.

Behind him were shelves lined with the books he had written. Row after row of them. Impressive.

Then I noticed something. Tucked into the corner of one of those impressive bookshelves were two plastic cups holding colorful paper flowers. 

You know the kind. The flowers children make in preschool out of construction paper, glue, and enormous amounts of love. The kind that proudly arrive home with stems that bend in impossible directions and petals that don't quite match.

I laughed. Of all the things he could have displayed behind him - awards, trophies, expensive artwork - there sat two plastic cups with paper flowers. And suddenly, those flowers became the most important things on the shelf.

Then I smiled, because I realized... I do the exact same thing.

Every Friday, I set my Shabbat table with my finest china and our sterling silver Kiddush cups. I put beautiful fresh flowers in the center - the kind you'd photograph for a magazine.

And right beside them, holding their own place of honor, are little paper flowers made by my grandchildren.

They do not match the china.
They do not match the silver.
They are not perfectly straight.

One might lean a little to the side. Another might have a petal that looks like it got into an argument with the scissors. I love them.

Nobody told my grandchildren that their flowers had to compete with the "important" things on the table. They just showed up. And I made room.

MY DIAMONDS

Maybe that is one of the gifts of getting older. We begin to understand that beauty does not always come in the form we expect.

Sometimes it comes in a little white jewelry box sitting next to the Shabbat candles.

My diamonds.

Well...not the kind you buy in a jewelry store.

Inside are dozens of rubber band bracelets, colorful plastic necklaces, and beaded creations lovingly made by my grandchildren.

Every one arrived with great ceremony. "Savta! I made this for you!" 

As far as they were concerned, they had just handed me the Crown Jewels. And I received them exactly that way.

I wear them. Not all at once. (I'm a grandmother, not a Christmas tree.)

I rotate them, because each one reminds me of the little hands that strung the beads, chose the colors, and waited for my reaction.

The funny thing is that I often wear them alongside real gold bracelets. If someone asked which bracelet is worth more, the jeweler and I might give different answers. 

Gold has value because it is rare. A rubber bracelet has value because one little person made it while thinking: "Savta will love this."

That's rarer.

Maybe that is what happens as we grow older. We stop measuring our wealth by what shines. We start measuring it by what holds love.

A chipped mug from a parent.
A faded photograph.
A paper flower.
A rubber bracelet.

To anyone else, they may just be things taking up space.

But to us... They hold voices.
They hold tiny hands.
They hold moments we never want to forget.
They are the real treasures.

Jump, Savta, Jump

I’ve got jump ropes on my mind. I woke up this morning with an old elementary school primer running through my head.

"Jump, Savta, jump."
"Look, Jerry. See Savta jump."
The next line should have been:
"See Savta jump high."

In my imagination, however, the word "high" was crossed out with a thick black marker.

Let's just say that if you blinked, you probably would have missed the exact moment both of my feet were technically off the ground. 

The funny thing is, this isn't my first attempt at becoming a jump-roper.

JUMPING ROPE WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG

About ten years ago, when I was still young (I was only sixty), my granddaughters Arielli and Galya decided that I should learn to jump rope. I honestly can't remember why. Did they want me to have as much fun as they were having? Or did they already understand the importance of building bone density? (Um…no…What four- and eight-year-olds think about that?)

Really, I don't remember. I'll have to ask them.

I do remember that I occasionally succeeded in getting my feet over the rope. But apparently, I wasn't determined enough, because eventually we became interested in other things and my jump-rope career came to an end.

Fast-forward ten years.

JUMPING ROPE WHEN YOU’RE OLD

Now, at seventy, with my jumps and hops becoming more difficult (read: almost non-existent) in tap class, I decided it was time to try again.

So, I poured out my non-jumping heart to my amazing physical therapist, Dara Saker, and she looked at me and said one simple word:

"Jump."

I stared at her face with a very puzzled expression, as if she had suddenly started speaking Chinese. What? "Jump."

Who tells a seventy-year-old to jump?

"I can't jump," I told her. She looked at me confidently. "You can, and you will."
"I really don't think I can."
"Jump. Jump right now. DO YOU WANT TO JUMP IN TAP OR NOT? Jump!"

So I jumped. Thirty times. Not high. In fact, you probably couldn't slide a penny underneath my feet while I was theoretically off the floor. But I jumped.

According to Dara, that counts.

Then she hung two thick exercise bands from the chin-up bars, instructed me to hold on tightly, and told me to jump again. It was almost like jumping on a trampoline. 

Apparently, I was smiling. "You're having fun, aren't you?" she asked.

Now, everyone knows that you should never admit that anything in physical therapy is fun, because that is the last time you will be allowed to do it.

But between us...
...it was kind of fun.

On Friday, while preparing for Shabbat, I was alone in my kitchen. So I jumped. Thirty times. Still not even close to penny height. But I jumped.

And then came my next lesson in jumping.

MORE JUMPING

Today, during warm-ups at Senior Women's Dance, our teacher Judy Kizer called out slowly: 
"Jump out, hands down."
"Jump in, hands up."

A studio full of women in their sixties and seventies froze. The expressions on our faces looked exactly like those crazy-eyed WhatsApp emojis. Was she telling us to do jumping jacks? Apparently, she was.

We were awkward. We looked at one another. We laughed. But we tried. Because if Judy said we should do it, she probably believed we could.

Two times. Not twenty. Two. But we did. And that was enough.

Somewhere between Dara's "Jump!" and Judy's "Jump!" I realized something. Maybe the hardest part of jumping isn't getting your feet off the floor. Maybe it's believing that you can, or not yet believing and trying to do it anyway.

So I've made a decision. I'm buying a jump rope.

When I mentioned this to my nine-year-old granddaughter, Yumi, she immediately informed me, "Savta, you need to get a jump rope with weights."

How does a nine-year-old know about weighted jump ropes? I have no idea. But I have learned that children often know things we adults haven't figured out yet.

By family vacation, IY"H, maybe my granddaughters and I will all be jumping together. They'll soar over their ropes. I'll celebrate every glorious penny-height jump. And while they laugh and jump, I'll sing the old jump-rope song from my childhood, “On the mountain, there’s a lady. Who she is I do not know...”

They will have no idea what I'm singing about. They will probably think Savta is silly. And they will laugh.

And maybe that's what growing older gracefully is really about. Not jumping as high as you once could. Just never deciding that you are finished jumping.

See Savta jump.

The Best Seat in the House

Few events have the power to transform dignified, kind mothers and grandmothers into a tightly packed, elbow-dodging, phone-wielding, camera-ready audience quite like a preschool end-of-year performance.

I arrived early, but the other mothers and grandmothers had clearly mastered the system - they had arrived even earlier. I found myself in the last row.

The classroom had been divided neatly in two: one half for the “stage,” and one half for the audience forty mothers and grandmothers packed into a space that felt designed for about twelve people and a coat rack. I settled into my seat and quickly realized I would be spending the next hour in intimate relationship with the backs of heads, raised smartphones, and the occasional strategic elbow.

Everyone was trying to be polite (I mean, they’re each going to meet eventually at the supermarket and the fruit store). Everyone was also, very clearly, trying to see her own child. The result was a kind of gentle chaos - subtle shifting, standing, re-standing, leaning, and the occasional quiet gymnastics routine to attain the perfect angle.

The teacher, meanwhile, was performing what can only be described as a one-woman miracle. She moved through the “stage” half of the room at lightning speed - straightening braids, adjusting bright yellow hats, tying neckerchiefs, placing props, repositioning small chairs, and quietly recalibrating entire human beings before sending them back into formation.

It was impossible not to watch her in awe. She looked less like a preschool teacher and more like the stage manager of a Broadway production - except the cast members were five years old and occasionally distracted by their own shoelaces.

The music would begin, and suddenly the girls would transform: sailors, picnickers, cheerful preschoolers performing carefully rehearsed hand motions. Well… most of them. A few were clearly improvising their own artistic interpretations, while others seemed mainly interested in locating their families in the audience and confirming their existence.

And then, just as everyone began to relax into the performance, there would be a pause. A long one. The kind of pause during which every adult in the room tried very hard not to calculate how many minutes of costume change had just passed, while simultaneously pretending not to notice that everyone else was doing exactly that.

And still, nobody sat down. Because of course, the moment you sit, that’s when your child will appear.

And just when I thought I might finally catch a clear view, the mothers in front of me would rise even higher on their toes, because the children were taking their place.

Every.
Single.
Time.

At one point, I found myself peering through the crook of someone’s elbow to catch a glimpse of my granddaughter. The arm was positioned so perfectly it practically framed her face, like an accidental art installation titled “Child, Partially Visible Through Elbow.”

I even took a photo of it. Proof that I had, in fact, witnessed something - just not necessarily in the way the performance was intended.

And then … Disaster struck.

DISASTER

Not the kind of disaster you expect. No falling off the stage. No forgotten choreography. Something far more serious in a room full of mothers trying to maintain composure.

A little girl in the back row sneezed.

It was not a small sneeze. It was the kind of sneeze that carries across a classroom and immediately changes the emotional weather in the room.

Her hands flew up to her face. The singing continued, but she froze - completely still, trying to contain the situation while also remembering she was, technically, supposed to be performing.

For a split second, nobody moved.

Forty mothers and grandmothers sat in collective suspended animation, all thinking the same thing: Do we do something? Is someone handling this?

The teacher, of course, was still backstage, completely unaware that an emergency had just occurred in full view of the audience.

And then - almost as one unified organism - the mothers opened their bags. Hands rummaged. Tissues appeared as if summoned. A brief moment of silent coordination, the kind that doesn’t need planning but somehow always works.

And then a grandmother rose.

She made her way through the chairs, stepped into the performance space without hesitation, and gently took charge. One tissue. One small intervention. A nose blown. A situation resolved.

And just like that, everything continued with the little girl joining the singing, and the audience exhaling in collective relief. Because truly - it could have been anyone’s child.

And in that moment, it felt like everyone understood: the performance had not been disrupted at all. It had simply paused for something more important.

THE FINALE

Then came the grand finale.

With great pomp and circumstance, two little girls - one of them, my granddaughter - rolled a giant red and white gift box into the center of the “stage.” The music softened. The audience leaned forward in unison. Even the elbows paused for a moment of suspense.

This was it. The big reveal. The culmination of weeks of rehearsal, costume changes, braids, hats, neckerchiefs, and carefully choreographed hand motions.

What would it be? Confetti? Treasure? Something magical?

The box opened.

And out came… a balloon. One single balloon.

For a moment there was silence, as if everyone was recalibrating their expectations. And then the room erupted into applause. Because, of course! In that moment, it felt entirely right. A balloon was exactly enough.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I had given up on seeing everything properly. I had stopped trying to navigate the forest of raised phones and shifting shoulders and simply accepted my new role as part of the audience infrastructure.

WILD WAVING

Every now and then, I stood up and waved wildly toward my granddaughter like a slightly unhinged air traffic controller guiding a very small plane toward landing.

And then she saw me. Her face lit up. She grinned.

That one grin cut straight through everything - the elbows, the phones, the chaos, the blocked view. It didn’t matter that I had barely seen the performance. I had seen her see me.

On the way home, I realized something very simple. I hadn’t really watched a performance. I had watched love in a crowded room. And somehow, that was more than enough.

Next Sunday, God willing, I’ll be back again - this time for my two-year-old granddaughter’s end-of-year performance.

I already know the rules.

I’ll arrive early. It won’t be early enough. I’ll find a seat. It won’t really be a seat. I’ll film things I can’t quite see. And I’ll wave like a maniac just to make sure she knows I’m there.

And I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Because these little classrooms are not really classrooms at all. They’re tiny theaters where the stars are very small… and the love is very big.

Hearts and Soles

For the first time in twenty years, the Dames of the Dance family stood inside one of its projects.

Some of the husbands came too.

Hopefully, the next time the dishes sit in the sink while their wives run off to dance, they'll skip the sigh. They've seen what it's all for.

Last Sunday, more than twenty dancers, choreographers, and supporters gathered at Merkaz Chossen, a therapy center dedicated to healing the emotional wounds of our chayalim and their families. We came to see the Five Senses Therapy Garden - a garden that our dancing helped build. We walked through it together, and I don't think there was a dry eye in the place. Which, considering we were standing in a garden, felt entirely appropriate.

Almost everyone, at some point, has felt the quiet frustration of wanting to make a difference but not knowing where to begin. The need is everywhere. The desire is genuine. But between the impulse and the action, there's a gap that can feel impossible to cross. Where do I start? What do I have to offer?

WHAT CAN I DO?

Dames of the Dance 1

I know that feeling well. Twenty years ago, at the age of 50, I walked into Judy Kizer's tap class as a complete beginner. Not a dancer. Not a choreographer. Just a woman who loved music and thought moving her feet to a beat counted as dancing. (Judy was very patient.)

And somewhere between the shuffles and the ball-changes, a thought took shape: if we love to dance this much, maybe our dancing could do some good in the world. It seemed almost too simple. But simple ideas, powered by heart and determination - and sensible shoes - have a way of surprising you.

Twenty years later, B"H, Dames of the Dance has raised 580,000 shekels for causes across Gush Etzion and beyond - food campaigns, trauma centers, youth at risk programs, lone soldiers, brides from Gush Katif, farms in need, children with special needs, senior citizens' programs, and now a garden dedicated to the healing of our chayalim and their families.

Five hundred and eighty thousand shekels. From a tap class and many other dance classes from Jerusalem, Bet Shemesh, Efrat and Kiryat Arba.

Most of us weren't professionals. We have simply been women of every age - beginners and veterans, young and not-so-young - who decided to take something we love and use it for good. Women who occasionally left the dishes in the sink. Women whose husbands occasionally sighed. Women who danced anyway.

DANCE AT EVERY STAGE

And here is my favorite part of the story: I am now 70 years old. My taps may be a little slower these days, but I am still out there on that stage, doing my very best to hang in there with the yungins. They are kind enough not to mention it.

Because this is what I have learned at every stage of my life - it is never too late to begin, and it is never too late to keep going.

At the Therapy Garden dedication ceremony, I tried to put it simply: Dames of the Dance has
never been just about dancing. It has always been about taking something we love and using it to help others. We do it with music. We do it with friendship. We do it with caring. We do it with our hearts.

And yes ... we do it with our soles.

The lesson of Dames is not "go take a dance class." The lesson is this: you already have what you need. A talent, a passion, a skill, a love - something that makes you come alive. The gap between wanting to help and actually helping is shorter than you think.

You just have to be willing to take the first step.

Even if that step is a tap.

GRADUATION EPILOGUE

 Life, it seems, has a sense of humor.

After writing about graduation tickets being rationed like wartime milk, and after graciously accepting my fate as a member of the Grandparent Standing-Room-Only Division, we received a phone call at 6:10 PM.

Extra tickets for the 7 PM graduation.

Not only did Sabba and I get to go, but we brought my sister and brother-in-law, as well.

We didn't sit together. That didn't matter. We were there.

We watched our granddaughter graduate from eighth grade. We watched the graduation show. Well, to be completely honest, I watched a two-hour eighth-grade show with the special superpower granted only to grandparents: the ability to feel nachas through absolutely anything.

My granddaughter wasn't on stage most of the time. She was an MC, and then backstage, moving scenery, helping the production run smoothly, making sure everything happened when and where it was supposed to happen.

The audience saw the show. I saw her.

And when it was over, she came out from backstage, smiling and happy. We took pictures. We hugged. We celebrated.

So perhaps the lesson is this:

Sometimes we don't get the ticket. And sometimes, just when we've made peace with not getting the ticket, four extra tickets appear. Either way, the joy is the same.

Mazal tov, sweetheart. What a privilege it is to watch you grow.