Family & Education
Baby’s here, but don't call me bubbe
Judy Silkoff is a young grandmother - and she's not ready to be called bubbe
February 17, 2020 10:46
Judy Silkoff is a young grandmother - and she's not ready to be called bubbe
February 17, 2020 10:46When my first grandchild was born a few weeks ago, one of the first questions that people asked me, after enquiring after the baby’s gender (a boy!) and his weight (7lb precisely!), was what I was going to be calling myself, now that I’d officially been bumped up a generation.
Between his grandparents, great-grandparents and even a great-great grandmother, this precious baby has already been blessed with six women to call grandma. So, while I could have opted to be #7, it seemed more sensible to try and stand out from the Grandma-crowd and choose something a little bit different.
The obvious choice should probably have been the Yiddish moniker Bubbe. But the first couple of “mazal tov, Bubbe” texts I received provoked such a visceral response in me, that it was clear this was absolutely not an option. Running a quick ‘Bubbe-search’ on Google Images brings up an entire page of clip art, replete with various versions of grey-haired old ladies in aprons. Whereas I, on the other hand, am still 18 in my head. My birth certificate may reveal that I am, in fact, 45 (and a half) but everyone knows that 45 is the new 25. And Bubbe I ain’t. Back to the drawing board.
I did rather like the idea of Granny (only when used ironically of course) but my 10-year-old daughter vetoed that idea (see! I am still young! I still have a child in primary school!). Another idea was G-ma, which I thought was quite funny, but my son, the baby’s 23-year-old daddy, is also still young enough to be embarrassed by me and turned quite pale at the thought.
In the end I settled on Savti, a diminutive of Savta, the Hebrew word for grandma. According to the website kveller.com, this means I am a “rockin’”type of grandmother, which is exactly the vibe I was aiming for.
Everyone tells me that the “grandmother club”, to which I have just been granted automatic entry (membership fee: outrageously expensive shopping trip to Brent Cross to purchase numerous adorable baby outfits that said baby will grow out of before he even has time to be sick on them all) is the best club ever. Indeed, still being comfortably on the right side of 50 hopefully means I will have lots of energy to offer babysitting, outings and enough fun to live up to my ‘Rockin’ Savti’ title. The flipside, of course, is that I also have a full-time job and at least 30 minutes a night of long-division and Chumash homework to endure with my young daughter.
And it is that reality that has led to the famous Yiddishe-mama guilt irrepressibly rising up within me. Surely, I should be round at my son and daughter-in-law’s flat, stocking the freezer with enough chicken soup and kugel to see them through an apocalypse, rather than searching “meal prep for work lunches” boards on Pinterest? I even found myself double-booked the very morning of the baby’s bris, dashing off straight after the seudah to a professional development programme I had enrolled in months earlier, instead of being on-hand to foil-wrap leftover rugelach and bagels. A veritable shanda!
Now a grand total of three weeks into to Savti-hood, I am beginning to find ways to juggle this new and extremely irresistible and delicious ball in my life. After-work visits for yummy cuddles are scheduled in my Outlook calendar alongside staff meetings and work events. And teeny-tiny pairs of baby sneakers and babygroes-that-look-like-three-piece-suits can just as easily be purchased online during my lunch-hour as in a boutique. I even downloaded an app that allowed me to send a cleaning service over to the new parents’ home a couple of times, which must surely score more brownie points with my daughter-in-law than the idea of having her mother-in-law turn up on the doorstep with a mop, full-time job or otherwise.
Of course, becoming a grandmother at the age of 45 is nothing special in the Orthodox Jewish community. When my youngest child was born 10 years ago, I spent a few days recuperating at the “Beis Brucha” mother and baby home in Stamford Hill, where it was not uncommon for first-time mums to end up rooming next to their own mothers and newborn baby siblings. And in wider society, 40-year-old Labour deputy leadership hopeful, Angela Rayner, who had her first grandchild three years ago, is definitely the kind of ‘glam-mother’ I hope to emulate.
Becoming a Savti has certainly been a wonderful, blessed experience so far, and I’m grateful for every single moment. But whatever you do — just don’t call me Bubbe.
