Babysitters having babies

I just received an email that got me thinking about one of the biggest differences between my life in Israel and my life in Canada.

I have a friend, we went to camp together in Canada and she lives nearby in Israel. We are the same age. She is a grandmother and I am the mother of a 13.5 year old. She is too, but her oldest is 21 and she has four more after that -- not to mention a very cute little granddaughter. She got married at 21 and I got married at 32. She was almost finished having babies before I even considered the idea.

While there is a trend now in Israel to not marry so young, it definitely has not caught on in religious circles. More secular young people are starting to focus on the same things that I was focused on when I was their age. First I went to university, twice. Then I got a job. Then I wanted a better job that paid more and was more challenging, so I sought out and found that. And that pretty much became my pattern for about six years. Move out to move up.

All my friends were living similar lives. My first friend to get married did so at 27. My friend Libby and I went to New York for her wedding. We were really fish out of water in the wedding world. In fact, we were so spaced out about weddings that we went to an afternoon reception that we thought was for our friend, the bride -- but turned out to be some stranger's party!

We didn't know that until we spied a non-white, non-Jewish looking guest and immediately jumped to the same conclusion independently: "Since when does Beth have any black friends?" That was the give away. Of course, we had already been there long enough to eat some food and mingle a bit.

My next two friends to get married did so about two years later, when we were about 29 -- and they both got married on the same weekend but in different countries. I drove to New York State for the first wedding on a Saturday morning -- yes, I was late -- and then unexpectedly stayed overnight and headed back to Toronto for the next wedding, which was Sunday at noon.

In those days that did not seem like a bad plan. I had a car. I had a credit card. I had gas. Life was simple. Plus driving through Welch's grape growing country in the early Summer morning is a life experience everyone should have. The smell in the air is like being in a bottle of Welch's grape jelly.

It was another few years before anyone I knew got married again. Oh, I guess that does not include my three friends who ended up in a lesbian love triangle. Who even knew they were lesbians? I entirely missed all the cues for that!!! That little twist in the story all worked itself out but not easily and not quickly. I know you would like to hear the details of this story, but this is not a gossipy blog, so sorry. Not today.

And then, one day I woke up and I was 30. I thought about trying to peel back the lamination on my birth certificate so that I could change the year I was born. It took me days to come to grips with the fact that I was 30 -- and hadn't done all the things I thought society expected of me. My bank account was in good shape and so was my shoe closet, but my uncle kept telling me: "Enough with this career business. You need a husband." It was starting to wear on me, but I wasn't sure that he was wrong.

Okay, enough of my details. Everything worked out fine. But here I am all these years later, living a much more traditional life than I lived in my single years in Toronto. And frankly, some days I think I should have married sooner. I want a grandchild now too. They are the best kinds of babies -- you love them; you want them around; and then when you have had enough you give them back to their parents and go do something adult-like where babies are not included. You don't need a babysitter. It's great.

Of course, then there are my Israeli friends in Jerusalem. They are also my age. Last week their daughter finally had a baby at 28. And where was that baby born and going to live???? Los Angeles. Babies of Israeli parents, in my friend's mind, are supposed to live in Israel. My friend, who is very secular, also married young because that's what Israelis of our generation did. Today, it is only the religious kids. (To me, they are kids with reproductive capabilities.)

Whatever unwritten rules existed when I was young, don't seem to exist anymore -- here or in North America.

And there is also the pendulum affect. I want my children to get married younger than I did because I want to be a participating grandparent and I need my kids to correct the errors of my dilly-dallying ways.

However, I do want them to be too old to be babysitters. It still unnerves me that my friend's married daughter was my kids' babysitter until weeks before she gave birth. There has to be some balance out there between my old life and my new one.