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MY GRANDFATHER WALKS THROUGH TIME. Every 20 minutes he comes down the same aisle
at the same wedding exactly 50 years ago tonight.
This evening the bride and groom
are celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. As the crowd at this suburban
country club mingles over drinks, a video of their wedding plays again and again high in
the corner of the reception room. Each time the film starts, Zaideh Chaim (that's
Grandpa Charlie in the vernacular) appears with Bubba Chava (Grandma Eve) on his
arm. Or maybe he has his arm on hers. She was always the support of the family, the
grand matriarch of this whole, matriarchal clan.
It was she who brought my mother over from the old country to marry my father --
that's how things were arranged in those days. So you might call Bubba Chava, if you'll
pardon my Yiddish, my raison d'etre. She was the pillar, the planner, the
worker and saver and scrounger, the Mother Courage of this immigrant family, the one
who could always say No to spending a penny or wasting an hour. If she wasn't
bearing and caring for her many children, she was busy marrying them off. Bubba
Chava had little Hebrew and less Latin, but Labor Omnia Vincit could have
been her motto: Labor Conquers All.
Once she brought over two brothers to marry two of her girls, but the chemistry wasn't
right, so she promoted the young men to boarders. Their progeny still show up at
family celebrations here in Chicago, where my grandfather settled, and which remains
the center of this sprawling family. I was halfway grown before I realized this particular
branch of the family wasn't blood kin at all, but kissin' cousins.
As Bubba Chava walks down the aisle at her granddaughter's wedding 50 years ago,
all eyes are on her bridegroom ---- now as they were then. Each time Zaideh Chaim
makes his brief appearance, the same oohs and ahs come involuntarily from the lips of
his grandchildren, now men and women deep into middle age. You can hear the
whisper of excitement and recognition from various upturned faces all around the
room: Zaideh Chaim! He looks just the same ---- except he's wearing a
skullcap for the wedding, instead of the black derby he wore inside the house and out.
(As a child, I wondered if he slept in it.) I don't think I ever saw him with his head
uncovered; it would have been a sin.
What a pleasure and anticipation to see him again, as it always was. For my
grandfather was the gentlest and most generous soul I've ever known ---- generous not
just with nickels and smiles, but most of all with his attention, his concentration. He had
all the time in this world and maybe the next to lavish on a grandchild. In that sense, he
was also the richest man I've ever known.
My grandmother Chava was a great woman who always had a word for a child: No.
My grandfather Chaim always said Yes without uttering a word. Time slowed, then
disappeared when you were with Zaideh Chaim. He turned to you and you were
Important.
You were so awed that you might be afraid to ask him, but he knew just what you
wanted ---- a walk to the drug store around the corner for a chocolate ice-cream cone.
Bubba Chava didn't have to know. It was our secret, Zadie's and mine. And the walk
was sweeter than the ice cream.
I don't remember how the ice-cream cone tasted, but seeing him on the screen,
coming down the aisle, I can remember just how it felt to walk by his side, holding his
hand to cross the street. Very safe. Very honored.
Now he walks toward us every 20 minutes in the movie the same way, and time stops.
I'm drawn back to the temporal world only by the conversation of two men by my
side. They look to be my age, maybe a little older. "It's so sad,'' says one.
I'm puzzled. I feel I could watch the film forever. What's sad about it? "Because
they're gone,'' the man says, "all those wonderful people.'' His friend disagrees. "No,
it's good to think about all they accomplished.`
I'm mystified by both comments. There's nothing sad about seeing them again. It's as if
they're here again, part of the celebration that's turned into a family reunion. As an
ancient sage said, some of the dead still live, while some of the living are already dead.
Nor does the film elevate because of what Zaideh Chaim accomplished. Even if he
hadn't founded a very extended family in America, it's not what he did, but who he
was that still uplifts, that is ever-present. His serenity, his gentleness, his manner. I
don't believe I can remember a word he said, but I can still wrap his presence around
me like a prayer shawl, a garment of light.
And there, behind him, comes my cousin Esther. How long has she been dead now?
She looks happy, fine, amused, may no evil befall her. In the grand dining room, I have
the privilege of sitting next to her younger son, to whom she was devoted. A little gray
around the temples now, he's a distinguished-looking man with deep-set eyes, an
unlined face, a sharp, handsome profile. My first cousin once removed is special. He
lives in a structured community in Florida, where he works as a janitor. He isn't the
baseball fan his father was, but he can be intensely focused. We talk about what he
likes to eat, and his pay scale. I think my cousin Esther, so driven in her last years,
would be assured, and so proud of her son. I know I am.
Then it's time to excuse myself and get back to the other room for Zaideh Chaim, who
should be coming down the aisle any moment now. What a pleasure to lay eyes on him
again. It's been years since he's appeared to me. The last time must have been about
1986 at a religious retreat. It was at the end of the sabbath during Havdala, the ritual
that separates the seventh day, that foretaste of the world to come, from the return to
this world. We blessed the candles and smelled the spices and sipped the wine and
began the slow circling dance that, as night fell, grew faster and wilder as our songs
mounted, and we twirled around and around and around. ...
That's when I saw him, still and composed, just outside the dancers, as always in his
own circle of calm. He looked beautiful. His eyes had never been bluer, and they
crinkled at the corners just the way they used to, and his black derby was in place,
and I could make out every sculpted white hair in his fastidious goatee. ...
Zadie! I cried. I told him the Others visited me in my dreams ---- Ma, Pa, all
of them. Even my grandmother on the other side of the family used to come and stand
by my bed while I slept, checking on me, more like a vision than a dream. But he
never did. Why?
He was quiet, smiling ever so slightly the way he did, while the rest of us spun. Why, I
repeated, hadn't he visited me before? He answered, softly, gently, without any trace
of chastisement in his clear soundless voice: "You never had the
Jewish World Review Dec. 2, 1998 / 13 Kislev, 5759
Guest at the celebration
By Paul Greenberg
Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of The Arkansas Democrat Gazzette and a columnist for JWR.
