Of all the wonderful two-word expressions in language – Shabbat shalom, welcome home, good night, let’s eat – my absolute favorites are the ones my grandsons say over and over whenever we meet: “Di, Saba” (Stop, Grandpa).
I love it. Those words put a smile on my lips during tense times, they make my bleary eyes gleam. I like so much how they say “Di, Saba” (“Di,” pronounced as in Lady Di) with such feeling and gusto that I even recorded it and play it whenever I’m down, which happened not infrequently during the recent Gaza crisis.
Sometimes after listening to the depressing news of riots in Jerusalem, rockets on Sderot and Ashkelon, synagogues in flames in Lod, I would reach for the recorder on my phone just to hear a recording of the sons of Skippy, aged three and nearly two, chirp those delightful little words.
“Di, Saba.” It grounds me.
And when do the grandsons utter these words? Whenever I annoy them, which is also not infrequently.
One grandson or the other will say “Di, Saba” when I hold onto one of his little legs when he is trying to walk away; when I pin him down and poke his chest while administering what is known in our parts as the “cherry chest” treatment; when I curl up the fingers on one of my hands, grit my teeth, hold my wrist as if I’m holding my hand back and tell him that The Claw [they pronounce it “dikla,” like the name of the Israeli singer] is out to get him.
“Di, Saba,” they’ll squeal. And me, I’ll just melt.
Rest assured, none of it is sadistic, or mean, or abusive. They’re just so much fun to annoy. And I just love to annoy.
Or, as The Wife has reminded me more than once, I was born to annoy. Again, not in a mean way, not in an angry way, just kind of in a noodgy, obnoxious way. A poke in the ribs here, a stupid accent there. Here a whine, there a pulling away of the pillow when she lies down to sleep.
It all makes me feel alive. I annoy, therefore I am.
In the old days, I used to take joy in annoying my sister. Boy did I enjoy annoying my sister. I annoyed that girl to tears, literally. I’d find that one thing that bothered her – like pointing to my wrist whenever she looked at me because she had a nodule on her own wrist that she was very self-conscious of – and just do it repeatedly.
My parents tried to comfort my sister by saying this was normal, that I would eventually outgrow it.
Except I never really did. The urge to annoy and be obnoxious remains, only the targets have changed. First, it was my sister, then The Wife (only after she became The Wife), then the kids (that was the greatest fun of all) and now the grandkids.
Certain things you just never really outgrow, always remaining a part of you and your personality. Being obnoxious to my loved ones is something that has forever remained a part of mine.
I SEE THINGS in my children as well that they don’t outgrow, or only much later than expected. With four kids – three boys and a girl – our home was always rambunctious, with the boys often physically going at it: wrestling and smacking one another. Afraid of getting hurt in the crossfire, I’d only intervene if they dared touch the Lass.
Just as my parents viewed my being obnoxious as a passing phase, so too when they were in elementary school did I think the fighting was just an age thing, that they would soon outgrow the wrestling and punching, and that at some point I would stop having to yell at them to stop fighting because they were going to hurt the couch (someone always ended up being thrown onto the couch).
But then it carried on: through high school and their teens, well into their army years and into their 20s. It’s finally subsided – they are wise enough now to worry about getting hurt – but once in a while they will still pounce on each other.
You also never really outgrow seeing your children as children (maybe because once in a while they still pounce on one another).
No matter how old they are, or how accomplished they have become, they are still your offspring, and patterns of behavior toward them born of years of living together and watching over and protecting them are difficult to break.
They could be in hi-tech earning more than you, they could be officers in the army, or supervising a team of live-in counselors for adults with special needs, and you are still going to see them as your kids: you’re still going to demand they message you when they arrive home, tell them to get more sleep, pile on with the “constructive” criticism and unsolicited advice. It’s just what you do as a parent; it’s not something you ever grow out of, there’s no finish line where you just stop.
It never ends. Just as I will always, in many ways, treat my children as children, so too does my father still see me as his boy, and treat me as such.
I may be in the sixth decade of life – with kids and even grandkids of my own – but whenever I visit him I still need to sneak into a side room to eat a snack before meals. My dad was always strict about not spoiling one’s appetite, so to this day if I have an urge for a Hershey’s bar in his presence anytime between breakfast and dinner, I have to hide it.
He’s never outgrown the need to tell me not to eat between meals, and I’ve never outgrown the need to eat something before dinner.
“Di, Abba,” I’ll tell my father the next time I visit and he catches me spoiling my appetite. And this will probably have as much effect on him as when my grandkids say, “Di, Saba” to me. Some patterns are impossible to change, some things just meant to be.