Adventure and Heartbreak Await
One of the problems with living through your country’s longest war is that it’s hard to complain about something that’s not a life-or-death issue.
But just between me and you, Dear Reader, here goes: At the beginning of Hanukkah, on the night between Dec. 25 and 26, my son Nathan, 37, and his wife, Avia, 35, are taking my precious grandsons Noam, 6, and Lavi, 3, on a one-way trip to Boston. Yes, if Hanukkah is in large part a celebration of the victory of the Maccabees over a majority culture (Hellenism), this year on the first day of Hanukkah, my son is setting the stage for my family’s re-entry into a Hanukkah-type battle.
A few months ago, when Nathan and Avia dropped their bomb on us, they couched it as follows: “You two began your married life with an adventure in Atlanta (a new city and region for both of you); seven years later you had a new adventure when you moved to Miami; and six years after that came the adventure of aliyah. We want an adventure.”
It was hard for me to argue with this. There is, indeed, something thrilling about moving to a completely new place. There is an incredible amount of learning that needs to happen before one succeeds in acclimatizing to a new area; finding the right schools for one’s children, the best ways to navigate the city, which stores to shop at—and what an incredible feeling of satisfaction when one succeeds.
Then there is the simple pleasure of an area’s sheer newness: buildings, malls, parks, nearby trails and towns; it’s all new and there is joy in that.
Nathan and Avia have a number of reasons for moving to Boston in particular, and to the extent that I can be said to be grateful (i.e., not at all) for one of them, it is the fact that Sarah’s parents reside in a Jewish independent-living facility in Dedham, a suburb of Boston. Dedham is also close to Newton, home to Sarah’s sister, Charlotte, (with whom Sarah speaks every day and who is very hospitable) and her husband, Matt, and where Nathan and Avia aim to live.
There are a bunch of other secondary reasons for the family’s move, but they need not concern us here because I don’t even accept the couple’s primary reason. Adventure, shmadventure: Poor old me has absolutely nothing to be gained from Nathan’s move to Boston. My life will now have a gaping hole in it; overnight, my thrice-weekly short bicycle trips to see my grandchildren will cease to exist.
Many people, upon hearing my tale of woe about Nathan, tell me: “Oh, but you’ll visit them.” These people have no idea of the huge difference between the visit of a grandparent who lives nearby and the visit of a grandparent who has to fly in.
Since Sarah and I lived in the U.S. for almost a decade with both sets of grandparents a flight away from our kids, we know that that kind of visit is not optimal. For one thing, it often requires the grandparents to live with their children and grandchildren during the course of the whole visit, which can prove taxing to everyone’s different daily schedules (and nerves).
Also, there are typically going to be a lot of rough patches during several consecutive days of a small child’s life. If you live nearby, as soon as the crying starts, you can skedaddle home.
But most difficult about a distant grandparent’s visits are the goodbyes, which are heart-wrenching. When I say goodbye to my other Israeli grandchildren, I know that I will see them again within a few weeks or even within a few days.
To say goodbye to Noam and Lavi and know that I won’t see them again for a few months? That makes me cry even now! But I guess I’ll survive—somehow. Happy Hanukkah.
Teddy Weinberger is a contributing writer to Jlife magazine. He made aliyah with his family in 1997 from Miami, where he was an assistant professor of religious studies. Teddy and his wife, Sarah Jane Ross, have five children.
