Author: Rabbi David Levin

Anything worth saying can be said in under two minutes.

My grandfather used to say that any conversation can be reduced to something compelling and short and delivered in two minutes or less. He practiced this with his telephone conversations. Grandpa would regularly call each of his grandchildren to say hello. He would call and start to chat, asking how we were, what was new, and then he would close by saying that he was just checking in, and he looked forward to talking again soon—all of it in under two minutes, including responses.

I marveled at how this could happen; there were a series of questions, each followed by a response.  And yet, it always seems to last for only a couple of minutes.

As I got older, I began to understand more about what was going on in these conversations. Initially, I thought it was about the expense of the telephone, for my grandfather was of the generation where the landline was an expensive proposition. AT&T, the only phone company,  charged based on the distance and phone-call time. That predates most of us, the generation with cell phones instantly able to communicate anywhere in the world for however long we would like for one set fee per month. How times have changed, but I digress

A bit later, I learned that there was something else going on. My grandfather was getting increasingly hard of hearing, making conversations on the phone without special devices like hearing aids much more difficult. But the impossible didn’t stop grandpa. He continued to make the phone calls long after his hearing stopped working, and even the hearing aids were ineffective. It was then I realized my grandfather was reaching out to keep in touch. He was interested in remaining connected to each of us and for us to know that he was interested in them.

As I listened to our conversations more closely, I realized that there wasn’t a conversation at all. Grandpa asked a question waited for what seemed to be a long enough time for a grandchild to respond. Then he moved on to ask the next question, again waiting for the appropriate amount of time for the response and so on until we reached the end of the “conversation,” at which time he would say how nice it was to speak, and he’s looking forward to speaking again soon.

Although Grandpa did not hear our responses, he knew if something significant had happened, good or bad, he would hear about it through other channels- particularly my dad, his son. Not hearing anything momentous from dad meant grandpa could have our conversation without worrying he would miss something.

I began to understand, albeit only in much later life, what grandpa was teaching me was what it meant to care and how important caring is.    The particulars of the conversations were unimportant, except for a grandson to know that his grandpa loved him and thought of him all the time — all in two minutes.