Naches and Yiches
A long time ago, I listened to a lecture in which two different Yiddish words were mentioned: naches and yiches. As you know, Yiddish has only a few words for politics, strategy and power, but three times more than German for interpersonal relationships. Naches and Yiches describe, if I remember correctly, the two very different emotional worlds of children and parents: the joy of the parents over the children (Naches) and that of the children over the parents (Yiches).
As everyone who has children and parents knows, these are two completely different things. Love for a child is one of the toughest things there is. It's like a pet bottle, you can throw it out of the window of a tower block, trample on it, ignore it - it will be damaged, but it won't dissolve.
This doesn't mean that you can't harbour deep feelings of dislike or even hatred towards your child; as research by Israeli sociologist Orna Donath shows, you can also regret parenthood and still love your children and not imagine life without them.
The special thing about love for children is that it does not have to be reciprocal. In other words, unlike romantic love, it does not require reciprocity. Of course it touches me when my daughter tells me that she loves me. But she doesn't have to say it.
Strictly speaking, she doesn't have to love me either. I love her anyway. No matter whether she forgets all her lines in her class's theatre performance or doesn't hit a note in her flute recital - we are bursting with pride. Because we love her.
Love for a child is one of the toughest things there is.
Not for what she does or can do, but for who she is. Our child. This special feeling is called naches in Yiddish. Yiches, on the other hand, is the joy that children feel when they see their parents. This is also a feeling, but in terms of consistency and expression, it relates to children's love like water to milk.
They are both drinks, but nobody would confuse them with each other. As a child, my enthusiasm for my mum was mainly reflected in the fact that I felt safe with her, wasn't afraid of her and didn't feel the urge to please her either.
If we wanted to go out again in the evening during the week, even though it was already too late, we would go into the living room and ask permission. Our mum was sitting on the sofa. She sighed, leant forward, took a cigarette out of the packet, lit it and leant back. This wordless gesture meant: It's too late, but I'm happy to have an evening to myself.
I got on my bike and rode to my friend. The fact that she allowed me to do it, that she trusted me, but also that her life was not just about us children, but also about herself, gave me a feeling of Yiches. The joy that parents can give their children.
