This week my eldest daughter celebrated her 30th birthday. I am usually happy on family birthdays, they signal that another year has passed and that no member of the household under my responsibility has broken an arm or leg. I see it as an achievement. But something about the number "30" was harder to digest for me.
It shouldn't have surprised me that much, she's been married for a year, and a much more responsible guy than she is, and they're raising a dog named Penny Yacoub, whom my daughter mistakenly calls "my daughter" and "granddog." She's even going abroad soon to get a master's degree and will finally stop eating our food unless she's counting on being sent boxes of schnitzels at FedEx.
Still, I was surprised. Maybe because my daughter has been lying for six years that she's 24, or maybe because it's hard for me to believe I've been a father for 30 years. After all, I'm 30 myself, I haven't had time to do half of what I wanted to do in life, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up and I'm not at all sure I'm mature and responsible enough to have children. So my daughter, the bald baby who sang "Ruach Ruach" at the age of six months and became an attraction among all visitors to Meir Park and the Dizengoff Center envelope, is a 30-year-old woman? At least I know she won't die at 27 like Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and many others — mainly because she's not a rock star, but also because she's past her age.
This realization, that I've been a father for three decades, gave me a burst of nostalgia. The year Einav was born, the Oslo Accords were signed, I had a pouch (and not ironically), and everyone here hummed David D'Or's "Take Care of the World, Child." We were more optimistic, we thought that there would soon be peace with the Arabs, and that there was no way that our daughter, who learned to harp from a very young age but had not yet learned how to read a clock, would have to go to the army.
And she really didn't go. I mean, she's gone, but calling her service in the Air Force film unit and searching for a pilot friend "army" might hurt those who were really in the army – like her adopted brother Eli or her younger sister Inbal, who served in Magellan.
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I'm not a perfect father, or so my children claim, but after 30 years of experience in the job, even the most mediocre employee may have interesting insights. And while you didn't ask for it, I'll happily share with you some of the insights I've gained over my years as a father:
1. Do not travel abroad with the children. Never. It's a waste of money. They fight all the time, pulling each other's hair in the car and playing Gameboy instead of looking at the scenery (the comment about the Gameboy may belong to the '90s, but it can be replaced by TikTok, and hope – that's relevant today). So even if they see a tiger riding Barack Obama from the window, it won't make them move their eyes off the screen. There isn't a family trip abroad that didn't end with me abruptly stopping the car, looking seriously at the girls sitting in the back and roaring: "There's no more abroad, next year you'll squirt on each other with a hose in the garden."
Also, children, or at least those I raised, don't appreciate good restaurants, don't care about museums, and worst of all, they don't remember anything about what happened. In other words, you suffered, wasted days off and opened a study fund - when you could buy a new car with a noise-blocking screen separating the front and rear seats, and as far as the cheeky children are concerned, they don't remember whether you went to the Northern Lights at the Pole or to the Gymboree in Petah Tikva.
2. My second insight is to never make promises to any child. Because kids remember everything, at least what they want to remember about using a credit card, and I've often made promises I can't keep, like the time I promised my eldest daughter that I would arrange a High Five concert for her at her wedding. It was 20 years ago, the band was at the peak of its success, and I didn't consider that over the years it would break up, that one of them would pass away, or that my daughter would still remember it. Einav still holds a grudge against me, and I still feel a little guilty, even though I swear I have nothing to do with the breakup of the band or the death of Amir Frisher Gutman.
3. "Ritalin" is not a dirty word: When the eldest was really small, two or three years old, we took her for a diagnosis because we suspected that with our questionable genes, something would likely be wrong with her. The diagnostician, who I saw on her face who immediately suspected that we had kidnapped the child from other parents in the maternity ward, told us that the girl was very intelligent, and that if she did not excel in school and become the most gifted in the class, she probably had severe attention disorders. We didn't ignore it and took the girl to every occupational therapist/remedial teacher/faxing witch/remorseful charlatan in the country.
Like any parent who is afraid to turn his child into a zombie and thinks he is as charming as he is, we didn't want to give Einav Ritalin. That's why we traveled with her every week across the country to the greatest experts in the field of attention and concentration in order to correct and concentrate the girl. We wasted dozens of hours a week on the road and in dubious waiting rooms, as well as money that could have gone on a luxurious car with an audio system that could play CDs and not just cassettes (again, this is Ninties). But it didn't help, the attention disorders were so severe that Einav didn't notice when she was in school and when she was in ballet class. Although in both she did not thrive despite the investment, perseverance and daily practice.
It wasn't until she was in eighth grade that we gave in and agreed to give her Ritalin. This didn't affect her either, and each time the experts raised the dose to the highest, the kind given to a child who threw a chair at the teacher because she pronounced his name incorrectly. I think that only after Einav started taking Ritalin did she learn to read and write. She always knew how to insult us, but now she could express her sarcastic insights about us in writing, and not settle for oral invective.
4. Another lesson I'd like to share with you, dear readers, is: Plan your future yourself, and don't trust your children. Ever since she was very little, every time Einav and I traveled by car, as soon as we pass by one particularly dilapidated and shady nursing home, my daughter would point to the fallen matte structure that itself looked like it needed the help of a Filipino to stand, and snorted at me: "This is where I'll put you if you annoy me." It's always been said with humor and a half-wink, but I've long understood that I should plan my future and not trust the girls when it comes to living in the future.
5. I think the best thing we have been able to do as parents is to encourage our children to dream big. None of them have sky-high self-confidence, they don't think of themselves as the most beautiful, smartest, funniest or most talented, and I'd like them to think, because that's reality. But they know that they can be anything they want in life, that perseverance is the key to success, and that any glass ceiling can be shattered like a clay plate in a Greek tavern, just make sure not to walk around barefoot afterwards.
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When your daughter suddenly turns 30, it just highlights how short life is, but also that it's worth enjoying and not just chasing achievements. Everything has its time, and no age is too late when it comes to dreams. If Prince Charles at the age of 450 has succeeded in fulfilling his dream of finally becoming king, the sky's really the limit. In short, Einav, you are a perfect daughter and I miss you already.
yairn@israelhayom.co.il
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