The Witch of the World

For twenty-three years, I have been the most wonderful grandmother in the world. At least in my own mind.

I was the fun grandmother. The generous grandmother. The exciting grandmother. Every visit sparkled. Every outing was an adventure. Every grandchild was brilliant, adorable, hilarious, and perfect. Anything they wanted was granted. The sun rose and set on them.

Then came this past week.

Their parents went away, and suddenly I wasn't the visiting grandmother anymore. I was the one in charge. And let me tell you something. The transformation was not pretty.

A few months ago, I played the Witch of Ein Dor on stage in the musical David. This week I became the Witch of the World … and I wasn't acting.

"Don't hit him."
"Stay away from her."
"Get into bed."
"Finish your dinner."
"No, you cannot watch that."
"You took it. Eat it."

THE GRANOLA BAR AFFAIR

Take, for example, the Granola Bar Affair. "Can I have a granola bar?" "I don't think you'll like it." "Yes!! I will!" "If you take it, you have to eat it." "I want it!"

He took it. He tasted it. His face did something I have previously only seen on people taking medicine. "You took it. You eat it."

That granola bar sat on the table. For two days. A monument to poor decision-making. Every time he walked past it, I reminded him: when you choose something, you eat it.

By the second day, even I was tired of looking at it. "Okay," I said. "If you really don't like it, let's throw it out. But what's our lesson here?" "Don't take something you won't eat." "Exactly."

WHERE IS SUPER SAVTA?

Every night I went to sleep wondering what had happened to Super Savta. Where was the woman who bought ice pops and read stories and played endless games? Who was this cranky person who seemed to spend the entire day enforcing rules?

Then last night I figured it out.

For one week, I wasn't really a grandmother. I was a mother-substitute. The fun grandmother's job is simple: spoil, spoil, spoil. She gets to arrive with treats, hugs, and stories. The mother-substitute has a different job description:
Keep them safe.
Keep them fed.
Keep them clean.
Keep them healthy until their parents come home.

Somewhere during the week, I remembered that I used to be a pretty strict mother. Apparently those skills were not lost. They had simply been dormant for a few decades.

AND SHE’S BACK

Fortunately, on Shabbat I regained some of my Savta Mojo. We played. We lost. We won. We laughed. We read books. That felt much more familiar.

And then, just to keep things interesting, came the Donkey Saga.

I was hit with an unexpected "situation." My grandson had apparently bought a donkey - or he thought he bought a donkey or maybe he only bid on a donkey, nobody was entirely sure - and he had spent the whole day worrying that it would be delivered to the farm near his school while he wasn't there to greet it.

I could have said, "I am not chasing a possible donkey that we don’t even know is yours. Let's just go home." And honestly, that would have been a reasonable thing to say. But he was so nervous and so excited, I couldn't let him down.

So when we left my house and went back to his town today, before we even checked on his actual, currently-living-with-us dog, we drove to the farm to see if the donkey had arrived.

It hadn't. And we stood there, the two of us, looking at an empty patch of farm where a possible-donkey was not. He was disappointed, but at that moment, he knew I wanted to come through for him.

Still, I worried that the grandchildren would remember me as Strict Savta, the Witch of the World - the one who said:
"You cannot lick it and put it back."
"Do not leave your bed."
"I'm not telling you again."

WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

So I decided to ask them a question. "What did you learn this week with Savta?" I expected silence. Instead, I got four answers.
"Only take what you will eat."
"Do not fight."
"Sleep is important."
"Clean up after yourself."

And just like that, I realized something. The children had not spent the week listening to my nagging. They had spent the week learning lessons. Simple lessons, perhaps. But not bad ones.

In fact, if every adult in the world followed those four rules, life would probably run much more smoothly.

So maybe Super Savta didn't disappear after all. Maybe she was simply wearing a disguise. For one week, she served as Acting Minister of Nutrition, Laundry, Conflict Resolution, and Bedtime Enforcement. And according to the children, she did a pretty good job.

The truth is that love does not always look like ice cream and adventures. Sometimes it looks like, "No, you may not lick it and put it back."

And that counts too.