She Said: She Said: Trading places

A little compassion is a marvelous thing. Too readily, we forget what it is like to sift through the tests of earlier portions of life. We fail to recall the feeling of being a height-challenged person, of being illiterate, or of possessing any of the other challenges of children.

Likewise, much too often we neglect to take into consideration that life's late portion, too, might incur challenges. Sadly, we often only focus on the stage in which we're standing.

It's not too late to be more inclusive in our perspectives. Consider the following story.

Yesterday, a young lady, with whom I have a slight acquaintance, visited her grandmother. Her granny, in turn, greeted her warmly, not because of the teen's intellect or beauty; that matron's family is filled gifted and talented persons. Rather, the elder expressed her love for her daughter's daughter because that grandchild, alone, out all of her descendants makes the time, twice a week, to check up on her forebearer.

At last count, the elder was Blessed to have more than two dozen grandchildren, almost all of which live in the same city as does she. Yet, only that sometimes rambunctious, always energized, teen makes a habit of visiting her.

Perhaps it is the purity of "sight" with which certain adolescents are graced that motivates that girl's visits. Perhaps it is golden middot, hidden under her sloppy bangs and much too long fingernails. Whatever the cause, that child's consistent befriending of her elder causes that senior not to see her, as do many members of the intermittent generation, as "difficult" or as otherwise "spirited," but as "kind" and as "considerate."

Recently, that teen excused herself from her routine to attend her class's annual trip. During her absence, her older brother, whom she had pressed into service in her stead, shyly, after a long day of yeshiva, knocked on his grandma's door. I heard he enjoyed the photo albums more than the cookies and that his safta marveled in his newly-acquired height in Torah as well as in his physical growth.

At the Shabbot table, thereafter, he spoke extensively about his experience. Soon, others of his siblings and some of his cousins were honoring their family's oldest member. Those children, too, were more fascinated by her stories of Europe and of the early years of the State of Israel than they were by the nut breads and syrupy drinks, which materialized during their visits.

In relationships, it's insufficient to round, unless we are diminishing our expectations, for the sake of peace. What's more, it's rewarding to extend ourselves into the lives of our persons. When possible, it's good to explore the domain of other familial generations.

Though the teen with whom the grandma made the initial, strong bond was not deterred by the fact of her relatives' participation in her grandmother's life, she was a little bit jealous that they, too, were receiving enthusiastic feedback about the moments and days of their lives. Just a few years later, when she, herself, became a mother, she learned from that experience, of having to share her safta with newly-interested relatives, to make each of her children feel cherished.

The family's senior had taught her well. Her children, in turn, delighted in visiting their great-grandma. Their mom, too, had passed on vital instruction.

- Channie

Some stuff just doesn't make sense to me. Among those senseless things, there are some, like calculus, which I can live without knowing. Others, like grownups, I would benefit from understanding.  

I appreciate that grownups are old. I know that age affects sensibility, as in, age makes you sensible. But in order to get old, you had to have been young first, and that's what confuses.

Grownups were all kids once. They know what it's like to be a kid, for your body to grow faster than your brain, and for you to conceptualize ketchup as a vegetable. I just don't understand how, if they already passed through this stage, they don't understand us.

Grownups laugh at me. They think I'm crazy. Take for example, the incident at my chemistry bagrut [matriculation].

As I am an immigrant, I am granted some aid during exams. One such aid is having my tests read a loud to me. Don't laugh, it really helps. About five minutes before this particular test, I was lying on a desk with my head hanging off the edge, and looking at the proctor upside down. I told her that I was an immigrant, and that I had a reading privilege, among other things. She checked her papers and informed me that there was nothing written about my immigration status on them.

Unperplexed, that proctor told me to go to my school's secretary to get the proper stickers, which would validate my status. Any student receiving aid has to put the corresponding stickers on his or her test booklets. I don't know why. It probably helps somehow. Or maybe the Ministry of Education had a lot of stickers, but nothing to do with them.

Anyway, I rolled off the desk and went to my school's office in search of stickers. Picture this; four minutes until her chemistry bagrut, a blonde-haired girl's running down her school's hallways, barefoot, until she almost smacks right into her secretary. Luckily, I managed to stop before I hit her, but we were both surprised.

"I need stickers" I told her

"Stickers?" I guess my request was a bit out of context.

"Yeah, stickers, for the bagrut, 'cause I'm an immigrant."

"Oh, those stickers. You see, in this test, you are "an immigrant without stickers."

"An immigrant without stickers? What's that mean?" Did that mean the ministry finally ran out of stickers?

"It means that you get all the aid you normally do, but without the stickers."

She didn't offer any further explanation, so I skipped back to the classroom and informed the proctor that I was "an immigrant without stickers." My explanation seemed to suit my proctor, although my 25% bonus time kept her late and wasn't much to her liking.

For me, the whole experience was a bit confusing. For the grownups involved, it was entertaining. Maybe they were living vicariously through me, wishing that it was them running down the hall worrying about "aid without stickers."

Maybe they wished it was them who still were vive ut vivas, living life to its fullest.

All I know is that I wish it were them taking the test for me.

- Becca