Back then

My husband is trying to plan a family getaway for our entire family, meaning us, our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren.

So far, he hasn’t been successful. Even jumping forward a year, there’s always someone whose schedule already stands in the way. Back when I was a kid, it wasn’t even necessary to plan our gatherings. They were what I call “de facto,” meaning there was no need to organize what was already in place.

Let me explain.

Surely not every family was like ours, but just as surely many were. For example, the four-family house we lived in on Aldine Street was built by Zayda. Zayda was a longtime widower living in that house with his daughter, Aunt Edna, and her family, consisting of her husband, Uncle Abie, and her two sons, Marvin and Bobby.

Yes, we lived in that same Aldine Street house — my parents, my sister, and our other grandfather, Pop, also a widower.

And yes, another apartment was occupied by my Uncle Ben and his wife, Ceil, and their daughter, Jody, as well as Ceil’s mother, Flippy.

Hence, three of the four apartments were occupied by close family. Not so unusual at all!

Zayda and the grandmother who I never knew but whose name I bear had six children. Not all of them lived on Aldine Street. One lived in Passaic, and two lived a block apart from each other in Brooklyn.

In other words, a family gathering was a logistically simple arrangement. The furthest that one family unit lived from the other was under an hour away.

There also were more peripheral relatives. A great-uncle lived on our corner of Aldine Street and Forest Place. Our cousins Chana and Simcha and their daughter, Esther, lived near Hawthorne Avenue, a short walk away.

And don’t think our maternal relatives were in yenem velt. No. They were safely in Queens, and we visited every Sunday on a rotating basis. My aunt served deli. Mom cooked. Every single Sunday!

Not to mention our shared summers at the Bauman House.

This arrangement was pretty common. Families lived near each other. My husband, growing up in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, also was surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

We got married in 1960. We didn’t even consider leaving the old neighborhood. Our first home was an apartment a scant few blocks from the house that Zayda built and where my parents still lived. It didn’t occur to us to look elsewhere for living quarters. Why should we? We loved the neighborhood, and it was close to everything we needed, including my parents and aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Back then that’s the way it was. Eventually we left for the suburbs. My parents soon followed, and moved into a garden apartment about a mile from us. Our relationship was close and constant until they moved to Herzliya.

Our children did not flee the roost as dramatically as their own progeny would a generation later.

True, our eldest and her husband spent a few of their early married years in Massachusetts, but none of the others was further afield than that, except for college years, which were probably the first step in the separation and weaning process.

Yes, there were some diversions. Our son traveled the world a bit, and I suffered thinking he would settle in Buenos Aires, quite a contender! He had bought an apartment in Recoleta, but fortunately a leak from the neighbor above was daunting. Then he married and settled in Tribeca. Not bad at all!

The two other daughters stayed local between NYC and New Jersey, with lengthy diversions in Israel, one for many, many years. Eventually, with all closer to home, our family get-togethers were frequent and easily arranged, even on very short notice.

Now it’s another story entirely. These days, when we want to see our family members we have to plan, and drive, or fly, often long distances. Let me tell you about it.

Number one grandson is a rabbi and lives in Maryland with his wife and four children. Needless to say we don’t see them daily, as I did with my own grandfathers. We do Facetime, and it’s nice but it’s just not the same. You know what I mean.

Next in line, grandson number two, is married and lives in Jerusalem with his and his wife’s first arrival, a baby boy. We go to visit fairly often but it requires a plan and a plane, and we’re not getting younger, as they say.

Number three grandson lives right across the Hudson in Manhattan. It’s close and convenient but still not the same as being in the same four-family house. But, so far, it’s the best, the closest to what was back then.

Number four grandson lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and baby daughter. It’s not around the corner, obviously, and to be redundant, it’s nice but just not the same as living in the same house.

Number five grandson, Aaron the paratrooper, whose time in Gaza haunted me, now lives at his yeshiva in Israel, where I fear the dropping of the other shoe and a callback to the war zone. He is now a citizen of that country, with no plans for leaving.

Our next family unit is Manhattan-based. Their three children grew up in the city. One now lives on the Upper East Side, awaiting the arrival of a baby in a few months. That’s near and dear! The second one is in San Francisco, definitely dear, but not near at all. The third is a married dentist, doing a residency in Connecticut while her new husband does his own residency in orthopedic surgery. They sort of live in Jersey City, but her schoolwork requires her to commute, so she lives near school and constantly shleps to Jersey City for Shabbatot. We see them occasionally, but their lives are so busy that they almost might as well live in San Francisco.

Our third child lives, happily for us, in West Orange!!!!! Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! Her children, not so much. One is married and living in Cambridge with a toddler boy. The second lives in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, the new promised land for single young Jews. The third is getting set to graduate from college and be married. Hopefully they will settle in New Jersey. I say nothing! And their fourth is right now in Israel but planning to attend college somewhere on the East Coast.

Our youngest has a wife and two daughters and lives in Connecticut. The girls are too young to predict where they will live but we’ve discovered that at this point Nyack is a perfect halfway point for us to brunch, and we do it often. This, of course, is a dynamic situation which will change soon and often. We’ve got to enjoy the proximity now, even though Zayda wouldn’t have considered it close!

I recently drove with a taxi driver in Raanana. We chatted about our children, and I asked him where his children live. There are five of them, all married with children of their own, he said. Four of them come every Shabbat for meals, living a short walk from their parents. Then he sadly related that the fifth child lives in Petach Tikva, a very quick drive away, and cannot join the family for the sabbath since it’s a bit too far to walk. I commiserated with him a bit. I should be so lucky!

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of eight. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com

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