JERUSALEM — The air is turning chilly here in Jerusalem.
Yet despite the knowledge that winter is here, there is a feeling of spring in the air and a spring in my step. I feel a sense of renewal.
This realization hit me as I was getting ready for my 20-minute walk to work. Halfway out the door I heard my wife, Michele, call down to me, “Quick, you have to come up and see this.” So with one sandal on and the other in my hand, I ran up the stairs.
When I arrived at my sons’ bedroom, there was Yoni, one of our little twins, lying in his crib. On his stomach one second, he was on his back the next, giggling with glee at what he had accomplished. First I felt surprise. Then joy. Then I began to reflect on the timing of this milestone.
Just the week before, Michele had thrown a surprise brunch in honor of my 50th birthday. Respectful of my wishes not to do anything big, it was very modest. That’s because birthdays depress me. I always thought that if I hadn’t achieved my goals by 50, it would be too late.
It hasn’t turned out that way.
At 50 I feel as if I’m starting phase one all over again. Just a few months ago I was the father of two adult children from a previous marriage; now I am a father of four, including a pair of “twinfants.”
While other 50-year-olds I know are planning for their retirement and embarking on grandparenthood, I plan to be working till I’m 90 (I’ll be about 70 when the twins are ready to attend college).
Rather than chart an exotic vacation to Kenya or the Far East, my expeditions are now limited to stalking Jerusalem’s supermarket shelves for elusive bargains on formula and disposable diapers.
Yet instead of feeling weighed down by the responsibility of caring for two little babies, I feel surprisingly buoyant. Life is suddenly filled with color and texture — soft purple elephants and fluffy yellow lions, giggles and music that float through our home.
Friday nights have a whole new flavor as I give Eitan and Yoni their Shabbat blessings. For the first time in years, I find myself singing my late father’s favorite niggunim, Shabbat melodies, so the boys will somehow “know” their grandfather and what he meant to me and their older siblings.
Naturally, I want Eitan and Yoni to know about my father’s life. Family history is important and his was particularly rich. My father was a Holocaust survivor, the only family member in Europe not murdered by the Nazis. When he finally made it to America after wandering the world for 13 years as a refugee, with a wife and two small children, he owned little more than the shirt on his back. All else — his parents and siblings, his community and friends — had been destroyed. At the age of 41, while most Americans my father’s age were already established, he started over in a strange country. He taught himself how to speak English and found positions as a rabbi and a shochet, a ritual slaughterer, an uphill climb for a man half his age.
My fondest memories of my father revolve around Shabbat: our modest house always filled with guests, joyous song at the Shabbat table, the aroma of kugel and tzimmes, and the chickens he brought home for my mother to cook every Friday.
My father taught me, by example, how to put aside the troubles of the week, and live in the moment. Over the years, when I came home to visit him, I could see my father growing older — his hair became whiter, his gait became slower — but he never grew old. Instead, his enthusiasm for life seemed to grow with each passing year.
Throughout my life, my father supported my passions and embraced them as if they were his own, once he understood why they were so important to me. I suppose that is why he supported my decision to immigrate to Israel at the age of 46.
More than anyone, he taught me that life is not static. My father’s second yahrzeit fell on the evening of Nov. 3, just before my 50th birthday and right after Yoni turned over for the first time. Now, as in life, my father is the bridge.
So I think about all these milestones: birth, death, transitions, and how they all are part of a cycle. They are like seasons in a year, as Ecclesiastes would say, and each one is to be treasured at its appropriate time and place. Yoni turned over today. Eitan will turn over tomorrow. I will be a father to my children and, with God’s help, a grandfather to theirs. And what I haven’t accomplished at 50 I can still accomplish at 51.
Let winter come. For me it’s still spring.