The years go by but I can still remember the beautiful spring day during my freshman year of college when, as a friend and I were enjoying the expansive hilltop view of Ithaca from a sloping green perch at Cornell, he told me about having just lost his mom to cancer. What I remember vividly, even now, was how fortunate he felt to be at this great school and how he regretted that he would not be able to share “all this” with her. For my part, so much of college was being caught up in my studies and my amusements, this felt like one of those moments when even just listening meant growing up a bit. Fast forward over 30 years to last Saturday, when my wife, my 15-year-old daughter, and I attend the bat mitzvah of the youngest of my friends’ three daughters.
It is the custom of their temple to allow the family to take a few moments to speak to the child who is having their bat or bar mitzvah in front of the congregation and to offer some hopes and happy thoughts of their own. Their oldest daughter, who will be starting college in the fall, went first and she reminded her youngest sister about how, when their dad spoke at her bat mitzvah, he talked about how he hoped that she felt that he and his wife gave her “roots and wings”—or, in other words, to have the feeling of being grounded by a loving home and community but also having the courage, desire, and imagination to pursue your individual hopes and dreams as you grow up.
What I loved about this is that one daughter had so clearly gotten the message that she herself wanted to pass it along to her sister.
Roots and wings.
It’s such a perfect little metaphor for what we all want for our children, no? I may have to borrow it for my son’s bar mitzvah two years from now.
Of course, it also reminded me that my friend’s mom had so obviously given him the same gift years ago.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at emessinger@manhattanmedia.com.
