Word Prompt – BUBBY – Bari Mitzmann

Ruth Feldman is my bubby. Well, she’s not actually my bubby. She’s my green bubby.

She’s over forty years my senior. We don’t speak constantly, and we spend the most time together when she comes to visit. I consider her one of my closest friends, and I am her sprout.

Ruth literally wrote the book on intergenerational gardening; the idea that you take someone in, you see them, you tend to them. Not to make them into something they’re not, but to help them become more of what they already are.

Bubby isn’t a title that comes with biology. It comes down to what someone does. My kids are blessed to have wonderful grandmothers. I had my own wonderful grandmothers. But Ruth is my bubby because she sees me. She has wisdom and life and perspective, and she gives it freely, without agenda.

That’s what I want to be. Not just for when, G-d-willing, my children have children of their own, but for others. For the people around me. In my community, in my circle. The ones who might need someone with a little more road behind them to sit with them and say, I see you, I see what you could be.

I want to tend to people the way Ruth tends to me and so many others.

I want to be somebody’s green bubby.