It was 12 years ago, in mid-September of 1962. I was nine, sitting in Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, New Jersey, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. The tall stained glass synagogue windows produced refracted rainbows on the wooden benches where my grandfather, or as I called him, Zayde, sat below with the rest of the men. The shul was packed with women and girls in new dresses and men talking and readjusting their tallis. I sat between Bubbe and my older sister, Simmie, who was fourteen. Petrified of breaking any rules, I kept my back pressed against the bench, and my knees squeezed together. I held the worn Siddur, with its loose and threading binding, in cupped hands as if it could break at any minute. I imagined the hundreds of praying hands before me turning these pages as the rabbi rocked back and forth in the front of the room, davening. The ladies were reading aloud all around me and I pretended to be following, embarrassed I couldn’t read a word of Hebrew.

When the prayers called for standing so long that my legs would ache, bending or stepping awkwardly to the right, left, or backward, I did so without a gripe. I did what the rabbi instructed. I thought he was the closest thing to G-d on earth and would do what he said without question. Glancing around the room, my eyes rested on the colorful menorah carved into the wooden doors of the Ark. I saw the Torah inside, safely wrapped in rich velvet coverings, and on top, a crown of silver, which Zayde told me was a crown for Israel.

My zayde was my first teacher of Judaism. He came to America during WWI from Eastern Europe. When he got here, there was no job and little money. Family had arranged for him to stay with an aunt and uncle in a tenement downtown in the lower east side of Manhattan. Within weeks, he landed employment doing manual labor and met Bubbe at a Jewish social. They were married within months. After years of sacrificing all but the bare essentials, they were able to buy a small dairy store in New Jersey, where they worked seven days a week and lived in an apartment in the back.

As a child, I walked to their store on weekends and shadowed Zayde as he candled the eggs or swept the floors just so I could hear him talk about the “old country.” I always knew where to find him because I could hear his shoes. He wore heavy black orthopedic laced shoes that made scuffing sounds as he walked on the old, uneven floors of the store. Although money was scarce, Zayde was meticulous about his appearance. Every morning, he wore a spotless shirt buttoned up to the collar and pants held up by perfectly even suspenders. He combed his receding reddish-gray hair back with care and never missed a morning shave.

Bubbe scurried back and forth between the store and the apartment, cleaning, helping customers, and ringing up sales. Her impeccably home-sewn dresses constantly sailed around her in one direction or another. She never stood still.

A Singer sewing machine was one of her few prized possessions. When not in use, the sewing machine folded up into a wooden cabinet, which she polished daily and displayed like a valued piece of furniture in the center room of the apartment. She had collected buttons of differing sizes and colors numbering well into the hundreds and kept them in an old blue and white straw sewing box with a clasp that could no longer clip the lid closed. Simmie and I would frequently dump all the buttons on the floor and sit for hours, picking through the little mountains of colorful circles and shapes to help Bubbe find the right ones to fit her newest creation.

Zayde’s storytelling came to an abrupt end when Bubbe passed away from a massive heart attack while walking to get fresh carrots for chicken soup. Zayde was never the same. He became irritable and impatient and rarely smiled. Now, when I would ask him to tell me about when he was a boy, instead of being met with a smile and a story, he would say, “Not now, I’m too busy,” or “Go play with your friends.” I was devastated.

He passed away seven months later.

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