We will be taking two weeks off as we celebrate our oldest son Chalom’s (Sam) graduation and our youngest son’s Lev-David’s (Lou) Bar-Mitzvah in Israel plus to do a lot of serious playing with our one-year-old grandson Ozzie.
And with those upcoming events plus our graduation page in this edition we have been thinking about marking times.
It seems to be a uniquely human thing to do. Yes insect, fish, fowl and some mammals migrate with the seasons but that is spurred by a search for food or warmth. Cicadas come out every four, five, six or 17 years but they mate and then die. But nothing besides us sets a time aside to mark an individual or a group of individuals passage from one stage of life to another.
There is no human tribe no matter how remote, how isolated or how primitive that does not mark birth, adulthood, marriage and death it is so universal yet so unique that it could be a definition of what it is to be human.
Considering no one died from not having a birthday party or a graduation it really does not seem necessary to mark “special” occasions except that it is.
We don’t know why it is but it is.
The need to mark comings and goings is so deep, so profound that the grave sites of Neanderthals have the pollen of ancient flowers and old stone tools that scream at us across the millennia “Here was a human being!”
We know little of what other ceremonies those ancient people had but if they marked death, They had to have marked life.
The most horrific photos of the Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields or of Rwanda are those of the piles of dead bodies. They are a unimpeachable indictment not to the victims’ worthlessness but the lack of humanity of their murderers.
While universal and ancient our grasp on humanity appears to be tenuous and can easily slip through our fingers given the right circumstances.
Perhaps it is because we all know at least subconsciously just how fragile our hold is that we grasp it so tightly and invent ceremony where none existed.
We not only graduate from high school but we “graduate” from elementary school and middle school. Atheist gay couples demand to be married and while they say it is a matter of enjoying the legal benefits afforded to straight couples, we think money and tax breaks alone cannot account for the passion in their voices.
They want the ceremony not the joint tax form.
And the ceremony it seems they will have, another addition to our marking of comings and goings, unions and births.
What we don’t mark are disunions, divorces and annulments.
Whether welcomed or dreaded those occasions are not usually marked by a toast or tears from friends and relatives.
It seems odd that we who have invented pet funerals and kindergarten commencement have nothing for something so common and so profound.
Yet as a rule we don’t celebrate or mourn an end to a marriage, it is a private affair or rather the lack of one.
But enough of events that aren’t marked we will soon have the joy of seeing one son get a degree and another enter manhood.
These ceremonies may seem insignificant as this world turns but for us they are the reason for living.
On another note we wish to celebrate the completion of our refurbishment of our vendor boxes in Wendover.
Begun in December we owe a great deal of thanks to Mr. McAdams of WWHS for brilliant paints jobs.
But most importantly our son Lou for his tireless and mostly uncomplaining efforts in stripping, prepping and then rebuilding our small “fleet”.
Nachas is a Hebrew word that translates as “The joy a child brings to a parent for accomplishment”
Our cup of nachas is overflowing.