Life Is In the Details
At the end of February, we read the Torah portion of Terumah, which includes a very detailed description of the materials needed to construct the portable sanctuary in the desert, the mishkan (or tabernacle, in archaic English). (Much of this information is eventually repeated in other sections of the Torah as well.) Each color of thread that went into weaving the curtains, each plane of wood or gold overlay, each hook, vessel or item for offering the sacrifices is noted. Nothing is left to imagination, and nothing is omitted. Growing up and reading this parashah each year signified just lists of boring information for me. I found no meaning or inspiration in its content. As an adult, however, I have discovered not only archeological and religious meaning in its intricacy, but also other layers of understanding as well.
The day after reading this Torah section, I flew to Florida to spend a few days with my grandchildren. These three pre-school children experience life in the moment. What happens now is of the utmost importance. The future is, at best, a vague concept for them. Anything that happened during the previous two hours, let alone the previous day, might be forgotten already, erased from their memories. The only meaningful time is “now.” Yet, what does happen now is the lattice – the building-blocks – for later, for tomorrow, for next year. As in building the mishkan, each hook, each line of weaving, each covering of gold laid over the solid wood becomes inseparable from the final whole product.
What we adults take for granted can often be the most important little hooks, threads and screws for fashioning the future of young children. How and what we read to them each day, how and what we say to them, the opportunities we make available to them, the multitude of people who touch their lives – all these details are the matrix for the future structure: their growing minds, their healthy relationships, their attitudes toward the world and about themselves.
In life and in educational language, there are “big ideas” that form the overall concept of what we need to know. Under these big ideas fall all the small details that explain, give meaning to and support the larger view. Transforming this information to raising our young children, the big idea can be our vision of bringing them to adulthood as literate, caring, self-sufficient, self-aware and healthy members of the Jewish and world communities. In order to reach this overarching goal, our day to day, hour to hour, interactions with our children take on more importance than just “what do we eat for lunch?” Providing them with appropriate educational experiences outside of the home, hiring appropriate caregivers who act at home “in loco parentis” when we are away, and thinking about the implications of what we and our spouses say and do to reinforce the underpinnings of our general goal all play a part in this process.
From the time they were just over a year of age, my toddler twin grandchildren have heard me speak each morning on the phone with my own mother, their great-grandmother. When visiting at their house, I switch on the speaker of my cell phone so that they can hear her voice and participate in the conversation. Eventually, they have come to anticipate “speaking” with her as soon as we are seated around their small table for breakfast. Breakfast time means that it is time to call my mother. Since distance and age make personal contact difficult, it has become for them and for her an opportunity to spend a few minutes together, to articulate what cereal they are eating, to sing a song together, to just connect, voice to voice. With good health and more years to go, they will hopefully have a collection of memories of reaching out to their great-grandmother, one morning at a time.
As we head toward Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Torah, our Jewish book of both big ideas and their underlying details, may we learn to “be in the moment” with our children, and may we help them move toward our conceptual goals for their spiritual, educational and physical growth, day by day.
