‘Kids these days,” goes the age-old lament of the elderly, “are not what they used to be – not as independent, not as disciplined, not as thoughtful.”
That lament aligns with the age-old Jewish concept of yeridat hadorot: the idea that each generation is inferior to the one that came before.
Except, of course, when it comes to grandparents. There – and I say this with all the objectivity of a grandfather myself – each generation of grandparents outdoes the one before.
I grew up with only one pair of grandparents, and – obviously – I loved them, and they loved me. But as much as we shared this affection, they never took their three grown children and all their grandchildren on a vacation. I doubt the idea ever entered their minds.
My grandfather was from Russia, though I have no idea where exactly. I know little about his background because – like many of that generation – he didn’t talk much. All I knew about him was that he cooked for the czar.
Creating a family past
Since I knew little about my grandfather’s background, I didn’t have much to tell my kids. But – being kids – they were curious.
“Tell us about your grandpa,” Skippy said when he was about six. Knowing so little, but not wanting to disappoint the little guy, I made something up.
“Actually, your great-grandfather was a Native American,” I told him, knowing that he might believe me, since I did hail from Colorado, which was Apache territory. “His name was Running Louey.”
The young Skippy, bless his gullible soul, believed me, so I kept up the gag. What can you do? Kids believe their fathers.
One day, maybe a year later, my father sent me a picture of my grandfather on the computer. Skippy was in the room when the picture flashed on the screen and asked who that bald man in a suit and tie with horn-rimmed glasses was.
When I said it was none other than Grandpa Louis, he burst into tears.
“You told me he was an Indian named Running Louey.”
Not an Indian, I had to explain, but rather a tailor who owned a shop in Denver called Keinon’s Cleaners & Tailors.
“Why do you think our clothes always look so clean?” I asked, trying to cheer him up. “Clean clothes are in our blood.”
My grandparents lived for that store, working in it day and night. They had no time for vacations – not for themselves, not for their kids, and definitely not for their grandkids. It was a different world, a different time. A vacation with the entire family – kids, grandkids and all – wasn’t even a consideration.
The same was true of my father. He loved my sister and me, and we loved him, but the last time we all went on a vacation together was to Mesa Verde when I was 16.
After high school, and definitely after college, my father – like so many Americans of his generation – no longer felt responsible for certain things. Dental care was one; vacations for his kids, his kids’ spouses, and especially his kids’ kids were another. That was our responsibility.
But my dad never lived in Israel.
Here, family vacations don’t end when the kids move out or get married – the guest list just gets a lot longer.
Then again, because families live close to one another, the culture is so family-oriented and societal expectations are different; grandparents here are much more involved in their grandchildren’s lives.
This has been even more true after October 7, when so many fathers are spending so much time in the reserves, and especially true during the dog days of August, when the day camps have ended, school has not yet begun, and parents start looking desperately toward Savta and Saba (grandma and grandpa).
“Isn't that lovely,” I remember thinking many years ago at a kibbutz guesthouse in the North, where I was spending a short summer vacation with my kids.
At a long table sat an elderly man in a beret, eating with what looked like his entire tribe – children, children’s spouses, and grandchildren galore. He sat at the head of the table, presiding over the whole rambunctious family.
“How nice and sweet,” I thought. And expensive.
And now I am that man, feeling responsible for taking my whole brood away somewhere at least once a year – be it a hotel in Eilat or a guest suite in the North.
This year we opted for a four‑night cruise from Haifa – oddly, not much more expensive than a villa with a pool in the North, once you factor in food and activities.
It was lovely, though taking the entire family away was more exhausting – and setting it up more nerve-racking – than I’d imagined.
At one point – heaven knows what came over us – The Wife and I offered to watch all eight grandchildren so their parents could enjoy a couple of hours ashore on their own. I started counting down the two hours almost immediately: “T-minus 118 minutes and counting,” I announced.
It helped to see that we were far from the only grandparents on the boat with a gaggle of grandchildren in tow.
Of the 2,000 or so passengers, about 1,000 had to be grandchildren. Everywhere you looked, there were grandchildren – running on the deck, standing on their heads in the carpeted corridors, pushing all the elevator buttons, reaching for the desserts in the dining room.
There was good news and bad news in that.
The bad news was that The Wife got dizzy on the boat because every time a kid yelled “Savta” – all Israeli kids at a certain age sound the same – she turned around, thinking it was one of ours.
The good news was that with all those other grandchildren shouting on the ship, you didn’t have to worry that yours were the ones bothering other people with their noise – because someone else’s were probably even louder.
Years ago, watching that grandfather at the kibbutz guesthouse, I didn’t just think, “How lovely,” as he presided over the generations gathered around him. I also wondered how he could afford it.
He probably couldn’t. But he did it anyway, figuring that getting the whole family together was worth the price.
Noise, exhaustion, and all.