Double digits!

I turned ten in 1962. It’s still one of my favorite milestones

Our youngest grandchild just celebrated his tenth birthday. Double digits! Turning ten is a milestone like first teeth and first steps and first days of school. Maybe some folks don’t give ten more thought than any other birthday.

Then there’s me.

First, I need to clarify how my birthday computations work. I have a November birthday, so I spend most of the year the younger age. That is, I turned ten in 1962, but January through October of 1962 I was 9 years old. So when I think about being ten, I am actually remembering the things I did in 1963.

As Frank Sinatra sang, for me ten was “a very good year.” I didn’t start with a birthday party, but I did receive a gold signet ring just as my mom had for her tenth birthday. Unbeknownst to me at the time, receiving jewelry when you turned ten would become a family tradition.

In 1962-63, I was in sixth grade. I was a bit on the young side due to demise of the A, B registration system used in the School District of Philadelphia. I skipped two half grades (as mentioned in previous blogs) to even out my having started kindergarten in January and to accommodate my somewhat precocious academic skills.

Louis H. Farrell School—my elementary school—was K through 6. It opened when I was going into 1B. I came in, literally, on the ground floor where the kindergarten and first grade classrooms (and the auditorium, gymnasium, and cafeteria) were located. In September 1962, I started sixth grade up on the third floor and turned ten 2 months later. My first year in double digits was my last year at Farrell.

Sixth grade was the first year we had different teachers for each subject. I can totally visualize their classrooms. I had Mr. Rudolph for Science (I made my first barometer during the unit on weather) and Mr. Katzin for Art in rooms across from each other at the one end of the third-floor hallway. Mrs. Hochberg’s math class (where I learned how to do number crossword puzzles) was next to Mr. Rudolph’s room. Across the hallway, interspersed with the fifth grade rooms, were Mr. Schiavone’s class (my home room and where I had Language Arts and Social Studies) and Mrs. Edelman’s room (Music). Mrs. Stevenson’s fifth-grade classroom was across from Mrs. Edelman’s—that’s where we witnessed all the Mercury space flights blast off. Our window to these spectacular events was a large, antenna-ed television sitting on a cart positioned caddy-cornered to provide room for as many students as possible to sit cross-legged on the floor. In sixth grade, we counted down Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper to lift off on their missions. Watching the recent Artemis 2 flight ignited so many memories.

Farrell School presented a Gilbert and Sullivan musical every year. When I was in sixth grade, the school diverted to a Victor Herbert show called The Fortune Teller. I was the understudy for the lead, Musette, performed by Phyllis Heller. Phyllis stayed healthy so I remained part of the song and dance ensemble. I enthusiastically belted out the tunes and polka-ed my way around the stage in my black velvet skirt and red crinoline, owning the production number Romany Life. Besides my love of stage time, I was beyond happy to stay at school for lunch for the last week of rehearsals, to eat cafeteria food and sit with my friends instead of walking home to a dull bologna sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk I poured down the sink as soon as my mother left the kitchen.

When I was ten years old, I experienced my first death. My paternal grandfather, Pop Pop Morris Zafran, succumbed to thyroid cancer on April 30. Apparently, being double digits wasn’t old enough—I was not allowed to attend the memorial service at Berschler’s chapel or the burial at Har Jehuda cemetery. But shiva (the 7 days of mourning) was held our house. Despite my intermittent pangs of loss, shiva was a happy cousin fest. We were relegated to the basement playroom during the evening minyon (prayers); we amused ourselves by plucking out the colored gravel then pitching it back into the fish tank and indulging in other equally as nonproductive games. And eating bakery cookies.

A month or so later, I went to my first wedding. My mom’s sister Judy married Uncle Sol. At least I thought it was my first wedding until I remembered I’d attended my Aunt Etty’s brother Moe’s wedding when I was much younger. My only memory of Moe’s event is hiding with other young guests in the balcony of the synagogue after the service.

I totally remember Aunt Judy’s wedding. My mom had knit my sister and me coordinating sweaters with white, faux fox collars and rhinestone fasteners to wear with our dressy dresses. The very small wedding was held at Temple Adath Israel, and we took photos with its lovely stained glass panels as the backdrop.

Within weeks of Judy’s wedding, I graduated from elementary school. I’m thinking I wore the cocktail-style dress from the wedding; I’ve been looking for photos. The ceremony was held in our school auditorium with all the pomp and circumstance of future graduations. We marched in behind a full color guard of Boy Scouts as we did for every Friday assembly. We had a school orchestra—did they play? We sang songs we had rehearsed for weeks. I played the bells (large xylophone) along with the rest of the bell group; we had been under Mrs. Hunter’s tutelage since fourth grade. There were speeches presented by the president of the Student Council and/or a salutation. Afterward, I got to go to Kiddie City and buy a Barbie doll (actually, I purchased her friend Midge) as my graduation present.

My first double digit summer was woven with newly acquired privileges. I was given permission to take the Shoppers Special—an express bus that ran from certain neighborhoods directly into downtown Philadelphia—with my BFF Barbara Dash. I took the 59B all by myself to Somerton Springs Swim Club several times a week and hung out with my friend Leni Moskow, eating French fries and ginzers (a.k.a., water ice) and jumping off the high dive when the line for the water slide got too long. We’d bring dimes for the jukebox and dance on the pavilion. My mom would come in the afternoon, play mah jongg for a few hours, then drive us home.

For a few years prior, I had been old enough to be dropped off at the Merben or Castor or Tyson movies to watch the likes of 101 Dalmations and The Parent Trap (the Hayley Mills version) and maybe even Son of Godzilla. The standout movie event my first double-digit year was seeing Bye Bye Birdie in the brand new Orleans Theater. During the opening scene, I thought Ann-Margret was gonna come right out of the screen. To this day, Bye Bye Birdie is one of my favorite musicals and theater experiences.

I can’t find the photos to back this up. [Sidebar: Those were the days of cameras and film and flashbulbs and, in short, the forethought to have the necessary supplies on hand to take pictures and the follow-up of having them developed.] But I think there had to have been a trip to the shore that summer. A brief stay at the Algiers Motel in Atlantic City. With the exception of a Passover trip to Florida to see my grandparents, I would be way past ten years old before a family vacation meant anything other than Mr. Peanut and Steel’s Fudge and Fralinger’s Salt Water Taffy and gimme time at Taber’s Toy Store.

I was still ten when I entered seventh grade at Wilson Junior High. Every morning, I walked down to the bus terminal at the end of our street and took the 59 antenna bus to Cottman Avenue. And then walked two blocks to the school, with a stop at Rosie’s little store for a pack of gum.

By myself. At ten.

I celebrated my eleventh birthday a week before JFK was assassinated.

Fast forward to marriage and parenthood. When our kids reached double digits, we gave them initial rings, perpetuating the family tradition passed down from my mom. The girls’ were yellow gold with engraved initials like mine, and Rob’s was block letters. Each child had the prerequisite birthday party. Missy’s was at the Character Breakfast during our trip to Disney World. Ali’s was a fifties themed party in our basement, and Rob’s was the usual pool party in our backyard that may have been preempted by a thunderstorm (I have to dig out the photos). And for each I composed their annual acrostic poem, highlighting the events of their year in rhyme. I hand-calligraphied and colored my creation and hung it for all the world to see. And then, most unlike me, I trashed it. But there are photos.

Given the deteriorating general state of safety in the world, our kids did not have as much freedom as I did at ten. And I guess I should consider they were in fifth grade, not sixth, which may have imposed inherent limits. But by the time they reached double digits, they already had different teachers for different subjects. They had flown numerous times—to DisneyWorld and several Caribbean islands. I felt comfortable dropping them off to see movies and wander the mall. We were too far a walk from public transportation for taking a bus to ever have been a consideration in their plans. As such, parents drove them to and fro and they always took a big yellow bus to school. They never had to worry about PTC or SEPTA tokens.

The first deaths they experienced were great-grandparents—my dad’s mom (Mom mom Minnie) and my mom’s dad (Pop Pop Bernie). Missy was in double digits, Ali was eight-ish, and Rob was almost three. Young enough to understand but not to be terribly distraught.

Their first public performances occurred way before there were ten candles on their cakes. Dance recitals, talent shows, musicals, championship ball games. Many came before that milestone birthday and even more came after.

When their kids—our grandchildren—reached double digits, the offer of a gift of jewelry continued, although not all of them accepted. Leo and Everett opted for other gifts. Zack and Cam went with neck chains like their sports idols wear. Only the girls wanted initial rings. I’m not sure how often they actually wear them. But all the grandkids seem to appreciate the books I put together of their first 10 years of Mom mom acrostic birthday poems I write for them as I did for their parents, accompanied by the corresponding birthday photos. I continue to do a poem for every birthday, layered one over the other in frames in their bedrooms.

Their first meaningful death experience was my dad’s passing. Leo was not quite ten. Like me at my grandfather’s shiva, the focus was on the happy memories, the Pops-isms, the first and last photos with their great-grandfather.

Unlike me, all of them—because we take them to Aruba and because their parents are better travelers than Bruce and me—have flown to various points all over the US and the Caribbean and/or across the pond. The newest/last among us to celebrate reaching double digits was sung to in a real French cafe.

Asked what they considered their double-digit rite of passage, the grandkids all agreed: getting a phone. Ali’s kids explained that getting a phone was supposed to have been a middle school phenomenon when they were a year or two older. But their school district went from a sixth through eighth grade middle school plan (they would have started at 11 years old) to a fifth through eighth system. And along with Missy’s and Rob’s boys, extracurricular, entrepreneurial, and social demands necessitated phone access. So now, all six of them are in my list of contacts. I didn’t get a phone—my Princess landline—until I was thirteen. I appreciated its mobility. I could walk all the way around my room and talk.

A phone is now a double-digit milestone.

Acknowledging their first double-digit year seemed to be a bigger a deal to me than to my Gen Alphas. Well, guess what. This mom mom’s mission is to ensure such occasions are always recognized. Especially the love-filled wonder of their first decade. Mission accomplished.

My sixth grade graduation photo—the year I celebrated being double digits. Gotta love the mom-cut bangs, Princess Leia pageboy, and gap teeth. And this was the retake.