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Have You Seen Grandpa Lately?
If we only had some free time we would have visited grandpa.
But life and its endless tasks, the kids and work...
and without noticing time flies and we haven't seen him for months.
Come to think of it,
where is he now?
מתי בפעם האחרונה
ראית את סבא?
It could happen to any family, and it happened to the Levingers':
their grandpa is missing.
Nice to meet you, I'm Tovit Neizer,
the author of "Have You Seen Grandpa Lately?"
Plot Summary
"You don’t remember where your grandfather lives?” Asked Shmulik.
“Just ask.”
The adjacent buildings made him confused. Some were renovated, rose with the years and stretched to the sides with green lush terraces.
The last time he visited the apartment was a few years back, when his grandfather received the Filipina caregiver and his mom asked him to swing by and make sure the two got along. His grandfather was edgy and detached, the Filipina sat in her room, silent and alert. His mother was away on a long trip and he didn’t want to worry her. With a short call he assured her that the two are perfectly fine and that sealed the deal for all sides.
Shmulik’s voice woke him up out of his memory.
“Here, she replied. ‘Rashi 43, flat no. 5, no intercom or a lock’. Well that’s great, later on you all wonder where he is and why he’s not answering. Many things could happen at a building where anyone can easily enter. Just don’t be surprised later on.”
On Passover eve Yoni arrives with his brother in law to his grandfather's home to pick him up for the family holiday dinner. Soon enough the two realize that the 90 years old grandfather is missing, with his Filipino caregiver.
The search after the grandfather unfolds the family dynamics at present and past and highlights their attempts to keep life unchanged.
Alongside the Israeli plot, the Filipino caregivers’ story takes the readers on a fascinating voyage through a transparent community who lives at old people’s homes and takes care of them.
The book will soon be out in English!
Leave your email below and we will update you once it's out (for the Hebrew version switch language)
What Made Me Write About Old People and Their Caregivers?
The idea caught my attention back in 2015, When I walked down Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv.
I glanced at the benches on the side of the avenue.
Many elderly people were sitting on them or next to them in wheelchairs, some of them were covered with blankets. Not far from them sat their Filipino caregivers, talking to each other or on their cell phones.
From time to time they checked how their employer was doing.
The boulevard was crowded with people moving back and forth in their daily lives, and those old men and Filipinas were an almost transparent landscape and background to the urban picture.
In the Busy Routine Even an Old Man
Could Disappear
That's when I started wondering what would happen if two people - an elderly man and his foreign caregiver - were to disappear.
It was not an apocalyptic thought taken from a science fiction book, but something that felt very realistic to me. It seemed likely that such a thing would happen in the flow of life and everyone's busy routine, and even more likely that no one around would notice it. Not even the family and relatives of that adult.
And that's where I started.
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