When I was around nine, I was one of a handful of girls my age who had grandparents living nearby. Out of my class of approximately 30 girls, 4 of us had between one and four grandparents whom we spent time with. The rest shared with us about their grandparents who died in the War and I was awed by these friends. Wow  – they had parents with war stories and that’s so cool.

Little did I realize that my friends would rather not have those stories, and have instead grandparents nearby. I was too busy running to and from my Omi and Opi’s house with the stone lions gracing opposite sides of  the porch  in front. I was busy sleeping over at Omi’s, covering tray tables with contact paper together with her, and eating sunny side up eggs at her kitchen  table. And when the Baltimore cousins came for Shabbos, I’d meet them at Oma’s because I lived six or so blocks away. There we would talk and chat and sit around in the upstairs bedrooms with slanted ceilings. Then we’d argue a bit about the supposed materialism of Brooklyn vs Baltimore, a tired and old discussion, one that never got anywhere. Those were the days.

But all that set the stage for cousins getting together at grandmother’s house. Eating meals together, refilling lemon or cherry ices molds in Oma’s side by side fridge and being together. One cousin, who lived downstairs would come up allegedly to stir up trouble and I’d take my bike back to my parents house.

Nowadays kids all have grandparents either living nearby in the same town or in a different town or city. Everyone is within  driving distance and the families are spread out over many hundred of miles, that doesn’t stop the grandparents from visiting or seeing their grandkids. It’s not like the times when some elderly were shut-ins in apartments or inactive residents in nursing homes. The grandparents are older and of a higher generation than their younger generation counterparts  but they want to be part of each other’s lives.

And somehow with the hecticness of everyone’s schedule and so many schedules to account for whether it’s the cousin in Passaic or Lakewood or Long Beach or far rockaway, it’s not a matter of visiting each other just by taking the bike over casually. These visits need to be carved into the daily schedule and that takes planning. Enter the historic Shabbaton. Read more about this in this week’s Binah Magazine. 

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