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.

Savta’s Graduation

This year, five of my grandchildren are graduating. B"H. Mazel tov. Two from high school and three from elementary school.

Naturally, everyone is focused on the graduates. There will be ceremonies, speeches, photographs, hugs, and enough cake to feed a small country — assuming, of course, you made the guest list.

(A topic for another essay: graduation tickets are apparently rationed like milk during the war. Three tickets, five tickets, never quite enough to go around. And somehow it’s always the grandparents who quietly volunteer to sit this one out. Which is fair, really. We had our turn. We sat through our own children’s graduations, performances, and several questionable haircuts in between. Let the siblings have the seats. Let them be the ones who get to stare at their brother or sister crossing that stage and think, that’s going to be me someday. We’ll be home, holding down the fort and the apple chips, perfectly content.)

I’M GRADUATING TOO

But I feel like I’m graduating too.

The high schoolers are deep in conversations about careers, national service, learning — all very serious, very adult, very forward-looking. They are gazing into the future.

I, meanwhile, am gazing into the past. Not sadly. Just with a sort of stunned “wait, when did this happen?” squint.

These are the same children who once sat on my couch eating snacks and playing board games. The same children who begged for just one more story. The same children who considered an afternoon with Savta the single greatest entertainment option available to mankind. Now they have friends. Plans. Phones. Lives.

Apparently, I am no longer the center of the social universe. I would like to formally note that I was not consulted about this decision. I assume there was a meeting.

The elementary school graduates are not much better. They’ve entered that mysterious in-between age - practicing for high school the way understudies practice for a part they haven’t been cast in yet.

Suddenly they are very busy. Very cool. Very above it all.

Rummikub with Savta now loses to hanging out with friends. A kiss in public has become a diplomatic incident requiring advance written notice. And being “shmooshed” - once a privilege, like a royal title - has been quietly revoked, no explanation given.

The children are graduating from childhood. And I am graduating from being the grandmother of little children.

BECOMING SOMEONE NEW

At first this made me sad. Then I realized something: every stage of grandparenting requires us to become somebody new. (Nobody warns you about this. There should be a pamphlet.)

First we are grandparents of babies. Then of toddlers. Then come the playgrounds, the storybooks, the sleepovers, the game nights, and the truly heroic quantities of nosh.

And then, before we’re quite ready, the job changes.

Perhaps it means fewer board games and more coffee dates. Fewer bedtime stories and more real conversations. Fewer hugs in public, more texts that simply say, “Hi.”

(In their language, that’s a big deal. It means they paused, mid-conversation, while sitting on the steps with friends laughing at who knows what, to think of me for one second. That one second means more than they could possibly know.)

Well, I’m still figuring it out. But then again, so are they. Which is a comforting thought.

GROWING UP AT EVERY AGE

Maybe growing up isn’t something that only happens to children. Maybe grandparents have to keep growing too - finding new ways to love people who no longer fit in our laps, but who will always fit in our hearts.

The good news is that I still have a few little ones around who think the couch, the swing, and the park are their happy place. So, I haven't been entirely retired. 

I’ve simply been promoted to the next stage - a stage I didn’t apply for, but am apparently very qualified for, having already survived several stages with their parents.

Because really, what greater blessing is there than watching the children you love become exactly who they were always meant to be?  

I may miss the little hands, the bedtime stories, the days when visiting Savta was a special occasion. But I would not trade the joy of watching them grow - not even for one more uninterrupted hour of “Ticket to Ride”, and not even for a graduation ticket.

So mazal tov, my dear graduates. You are beginning a new chapter. And it seems Savta is too. We’ll learn this one together.

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

For centuries, mankind has searched for the Fountain of Youth.

Explorers braved stormy seas to find its source. Alchemists searched for magical formulas. Scientists studied ageless villagers in far-off mountains. Entire industries have been built around miraculous creams, vitamins, and exercise machines. Everyone searching for the same thing - a way to stay young.

Well, search no further.

We have uncovered the solution to the world's greatest mystery. My husband made his discovery on a preschool class minibus, and I made mine in a rocking chair with the quiet snore of my two-year-old grandbaby.

THE CLASS TRIP

My husband, "Sabba" to the kids, volunteered to be a parent on the preschool class trip. The night before the expedition, our kitchen table looked like a staging area for an African safari - a borrowed baseball cap, sunglasses, sunscreen, a water bottle, a bag lunch, and a handwritten list of instructions, which Sabba studied very, very carefully.

The next morning, he climbed aboard a preschool minibus wearing his white shirt, black cargo pants, and electric blue sneakers, and joined a crowd of squealing four-year-olds heading out for adventure. He high-fived our grandson, laughed at the antics of his friends, stopped a few potential fights, and had a grand time.

Sabba reported that the highlight of the trip was an animal show, which featured, among other things, a giant snake that was draped enthusiastically over the shrieking children like a very large, very slimy scarf. Sabba came home and said, simply: "There was a snake." I did not ask follow-up questions.

SWINGING AND ROCKING

I, on the other hand, picked up our two-year-old granddaughter from pre-preschool. When I arrived, a teeny pair of pink socks was hanging on her hat hook. They were not hers. She was certain they were. She insisted I put them on immediately, right there in the hallway. I did. Somewhere, a little girl is going home sockless. I hope her mother doesn't flip.

We went to the park, ate ices on a bench, and headed to the swings. She wouldn't accept any help climbing onto the swing. She is two. She slipped off four times. On the fifth try she made it, and looked at me with the triumphant expression of someone who has just conquered Everest. I cheered like she had.

Then we went back home to rest. I rocked her in my arms as her head nodded back and forth, and I hummed the melody I had hummed to her mother thirty years ago - a melody I thought I had forgotten - until she fell asleep in my lap.

And I realized something.

DISCOVERING THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

The Fountain of Youth isn't about looking young. It's about participating in the world of the young.

Grandparents who are involved with their grandchildren have a second chance at life. You think you're finished with preschool trips. Then suddenly you're on one. You think your days of discussing snacks, playgrounds, missing socks, and who gets to sit by the window are long behind you. Then grandchildren arrive and hand you a fresh ticket.

As Sabba called out to the kids on the jumping castles, "No pushing. One at a time!", he was suddenly forty-five again, calling out to our own boys as they over-enthusiastically bounded through the jumping castles of our kingdom long ago. The children ignored him completely, just as our boys did thirty years ago. Some things are eternal.

As my two-year-old gently snored in my arms, her warm breath on my cheek, I was in my thirties again, holding her mother - the same blonde curls gently bobbing, the same angelic look on her sleeping face.

THE TREASURE IN OUR REACH

The Fountain of Youth isn't a fairy tale or an impossible treasure. It is right there - as we eat lunch with messy four-year-olds, or try to push a toddler on a swing.

Access to the Fountain is granted when you take the hand of your grandchild, sit him on your lap for a story, or look up at the birds together. When you enter your grandchild's world, your knees may still be achy, but somehow time rewinds to those days, decades ago when you couldn't imagine that your little darlings would soon have little darlings of their own.

Perhaps that is why the explorers never found the Fountain of Youth. They were looking in the wrong places. They searched in hidden valleys and distant mountains. They should have looked in preschools, and beside sandboxes.

They should have looked on a class bus filled with four-year-olds wearing sun hats and carrying sticky juice boxes, or beside a rocking chair where a grandmother is humming an old lullaby to her grandchild. They should have looked for a man in electric blue sneakers refereeing a jumping castle, or a grandmother chasing her grandbaby around the park.

Because that is where time folds in on itself. That is where yesterday and today sit side by side. That is where a seventy-year-old man becomes a young father again for an afternoon, and a white-haired grandmother closes her eyes and remembers when her face was smooth and her hair was still blonde.

Looking into the eyes of our grandchildren, we realize that the years did not take away the sweetest parts of life. In fact, they may have made them even sweeter.

They simply brought them back wearing smaller shoes.

Blessed be a Sandwich

What's a sandwich? Two pieces of bread with something squished in the middle. (My mother-in-law ad 120 puts a slice of honey cake between her bread, but that's another story.) They call folks in my stage of life, sandwiches. Thank G-d, we've got parents on one side of our attention and children and grandchildren on the other. I guess we could feel squished by the responsibilities of both, but instead of being compared to a peanut butter on toast or lox on a bagel, I'd rather think of myself as an overstuffed club sandwich with delicious deli meat, pickles, coleslaw and Russian dressing - full and flavorful.

I flew down to Florida today/ yesterday/ today/ whenever/ the day seems confused, to visit my dearest mother (may she live and be well until 120). It's my fourth time in America since my family made Aliyah 25 years ago. My mother used to travel to Israel twice every year, but it's gotten a bit harder for her lately. So, here I am with my daughter in sunny Florida to visit "Bubby".

We hit the ground running, dropping off our bags in her apartment and immediately attending two programs in her senior residence - A Virtual Visit to Ellis Island and Remembering Tin Pan Alley.

None of the seniors in the room had come through Ellis Island, although they said their parents had. Everyone had a story - the kid with an eye infection, the tailor who got the name Schneider, etc.

Music-R-Us

The Tin Pan Alley program was supposed to have piano accompaniment. When the pianist didn't show, the lecturer was disappointed. Talking about Tin Pan Alley without music is kind of like going to an ice cream parlor that's all out of your favorite flavors. Everyone sat quietly as she spoke about the music of Gorge M. Cohan and Irving Berlin. This would not do! My sister and I began singing every song the lecturer spoke about - By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Over There,  K-K-K-Katy, Give My Regards to Broadway, Yes We Have No bananas, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Swanee and more. (They should hire us to perform.) Some other voices chimed in and we had such a rousing good time. The only thing missing was the beer.

Sitting together at a speech.

Then we met some of my mother's friends. They were so thrilled we came in from Israel. They remembered traveling there in 1972, 1989 after the Six Day War, after the Golan communities were formed. None had visited less than twenty years ago. Boy, I told them, things have really changed. They were happy to know that Israel has grown and prospered.

B"H, I'm lucky to be spending time with my Mom on her home turf, and I'm looking forward to her next trip to Israel to visit her great-grandkids.  Pastrami on rye, anyone? Yummm.