AV v. AV: Crying – Remembering – Protecting – Laughing

“In the remembrance of a weeping queen.” Richard II, 3, 4 William Shakespeare (1595)

Do you remember the first time you saw your mother cry?

You probably do. It’s unforgettably traumatic for most children.

I certainly do, indeed many: Her sitting in the bathroom, holding me, trembling, my father pounding on the locked-door. Her babysitting me, helplessly agonizing, as her daughter underwent an emergency appendectomy. Her tearing when she “Forgot” to bring a birthday cake (we couldn’t afford) to school.

On the ninth day of Av, we traditionally cry, remembering every calamity that ever befell our people.

Yet, Av has another, in my humble opinion, more important meaning -Father.

As a father, and mother, we protect our children from traumatic memories. The most striking example was my parents, and their generation of Survivors, never speaking about their experience.

Indeed, the very word Holocaust, or Shoah, didn’t exist. They only referred to “The War.” If we asked why they had numbers on their arms, they replied they received them during”The War”, as if it was a souvenir. Instinctively, I knew not to ask why my father woke up crying every night.

As parents, the two Avs conflict with each other.

When do we cry? When do we remember? When do we protect? When do we allow our children to see us cry? When do we expose them to what we remember that will make them cry?

Although they are now middle-aged, I don’t believe my children have ever seen me cry. They have certainly seen me distraught (particularly when they were suffering), but, wisely or not, to protect them, I have never shed tears in their presence. Truth be told, few people have seen me cry, since I turned puberty. (Prior, too many did.)

Until a decade ago, to protect them, I never shared with them the inevitable health-crises that accompany aging. When the crisis abated, I told them the good news. They finally lovingly but firmly informed me, despite my protective motives, this infantilization was not acceptable. If I wanted to support them during their crises, they had to be allowed to do the same.

I am frequently asked how old should a child be to attend, or speak at a loved one’s funeral. I respond, I don’t have the answer. Neither does the parent. The child does.

When our rabbi heard our barely bat mitzvah twins would speak at my father’s funeral, he warned us against it. He shared, at his grandfather’s funeral, when he was 30, he had only to recite Tehillim, but was so overcome he had to be helped down.

In the end, their eulogies were the most moving, and they were more composed than I. He acknowledged he had been mistaken.

We want to protect our children from life’s inequities, but we can’t.

The dog dies. Zayde no longer recognizes us. Their friend’s parents divorce.  Their favorite teacher is fired. And, the “Dates that will live in infamy”, September 11, October 7, & Tisha’ B’Av.

We experience three phases of observing it: Too young to fast. Fasting. Too old to fast.

The more important question is, when are we too young to confront it? There is no “One-size-fits-all.” Only one thing is certain.

Let the joy exceed the sorrow.

I am also frequently asked, as the child of survivors, can I believe in God? My answer is, when I think of my parents, what they experienced, I find it impossible to. However, when I think of my children, what I have experienced, I find it impossible not to.

As our own children have discovered, when we are blessed with a child, we become a better person. From the day mine were born, I pretended to be the person I wanted them to think I was.

In time, as in Sir Max Beerbohm’s short-story The Happy Hypocrite, when we fully embrace a role, we become that person. If we never remove the mask, eventually our face contours to it.

Hepatologists counsel, for every sip of alcohol, surround it with several gulps of water. If we expose our children to the traumas that define Tisha B’Av, make sure we subsequently envelop them in the joys that characterize  Shabbat Nachamu.

I was less traumatized by my father crying nightly than by the fact he never laughed.

The third-greatest gift we bestow upon our children is to be there for them when they cry.

The second-greatest gift is every occasion they see us laugh.

Our greatest gift, to them, and, more so to us, is when we succeed in laminating laughter onto their divine countenances.

Laughter makes their Shyna Punim shine.