Saba's Spurs go marching on - The Jewish Chronicle

The phone has been ringing off the hook. Calls are coming from far and wide. “Yes it is fantastic,” my husband Laurence responds to one caller. “We’re absolutely delighted,” he tells another. “A bit nerve-wracking as time went on, but all fine in the end.” There is a smile on his face; a spring in his step. He is, in short, ecstatic. You could be forgiven for thinking that we are celebrating a special family event, and indeed there hasn’t been this much excitement in our house since we became grandparents for the first time a few months ago. “I said we needed five points from our next three games and now we have four!” he tells me happily, as he scans the league tables again. Honestly. You’d think his beloved Tottenham Hotspur had just secured the premiership, rather than drawing 4-4 with the enemy. “Keep a grip,” I say. “Spurs are still bottom of the table and from there they can only go down, as well as up.” My cautionary words cannot dampen the pure, undiluted joy on Laurence’s face this morning. My son phones home for the first time in three days. He’s just heard the news, which has spread even to his remote army base, and wants to share in the excitement. The phone rings again. It’s a friend from Jerusalem who doesn’t even like football, but for some reason he is congratulating Laurence as if he had played some part in last night’s… well, not even victory. Anyway, we are due to look after our grandson Omer later today, so at some point Laurence is going to have to stop reading online match reports and Spurs websites. Now that our elder daughter Rachel has gone back to university, we help her by collecting Omer one day a week from the “maon” (crèche). And it gives us pure, undiluted joy to look after him. Grandparenthood is everything – and more – that our fellow grandparents had told us it would be. Our children were 11, 8 and 6 when we came on aliya, and they have never called us “imma” and “abba”. What a privilege it is to be “savta” and “saba” to our first sabra grandchild. And what pleasure it will give Laurence today when he sings “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” to Omer with even more gusto than usual.