Einstein's theory of special relativity can be boiled down to one observation: That perception of time varies depending on the perspective of an object in motion. This observation would have come as quite a shock to Galileo (who's principle of relativity was disproved by Einstein), however any modern parent would see this as no big surprise. The speed at which one must move to take care of a child and still accomplish all that is required to move ahead in the modern urban world necessarily skews the perception of time built upon years of experience.

Relative to professional adults, a child's life moves at a rather leisurely pace. Even accounting for the responsibilities of school, homework, and family chores, ample time is still left over for social pursuits such as pulling girls' pony-tails, launching spit wads at little sisters, dodge-ball, etc... This pace undergoes its first major change around the time a teenager leaves high-school, and his parents' house in order to attend college and live in what can be referred to as "subsidized independence." Suddenly, in addition to the familiar responsibilities of schoolwork, the student is now necessarily reliant on themselves for tasks previously dependent on his parents; tasks such as buying his own top-Ramin, paying the bills for those Christina Aguilera ring tones, and possibly part-time work at the local Chik-fil-A begin to alter his perception of time. How can he accomplish all that he would like and still find time to attend the killer kegger at I-Eta-Pi?

A more fundamental shift to the perception of time, specifically that left over for leisurely pursuits, typically occurs following college at the onset of professional life. Such mundane tasks as earning a living and making money begin to seriously alter one's ability to hone their skills at World of Warcraft. Of course, time must also be set aside to tweak one's profile at e-disHarmony.com in order to bleed even more time on a multitude of over-priced restaurants, pretentious night clubs, and haughty hotties. It is amazing most twenty-something's can manage to stay awake.

Of course, if one manages to get through all of the adolescent and young adult trials, they are still in for a rude awakening once they finally get married. Suddenly a formerly "busy" person must find time to combine his own pursuits with that of his loving spouse. Sunday morning sleeping-in and hangover nursing make way for romantic strolls to Restoration Hardware. The decorative simplicity of "it's black, I'll take it," somehow morphs into the complexities of "matching floral prints." Allowing time to nurture a relationship as well as accomplishing all of the things previously thought important, no longer seems like a challenge worthy of running the extra mile, but rather an impossibility destined to transform the former bachelor's life.

All this, however, is mere training towards the ultimate challenge awaiting the transformation of child to man: Parenthood. Think of it like trying to train for a marathon by multiple trips to the corner liquor store for cheap beer. You may think you're getting a workout, but the real thing is likely to severely maim you.

You used to wake-up, take a shower, and go to work? Now there is no need to wake-up because you likely haven't slept in the first place. Your shower is more likely to be under drool than hot water. Going to work will still happen, but not before you packed the diaper bag, changed the baby, stubbed your toe on the "Exer-saucer" left in the middle of your hallway, packed some bottles, and changed your shirt twice from curdled spit-up. When you finally get to work -- late -- your phone will inevitably ring informing you that the baby is stuffed up and in need of emergency rhino-suction. Once that crisis is resolved, you tell your boss that he needs to wait because you need to run home to switch cars with your wife because you accidentally drove to work with the only infant car-seat and she is now stuck immobile. Upon returning to work, you realize that you missed your East-Coast deadline and that the Pacific Rim is now beating down your neck to make sure that the TPS reports are being submitted on time.

Your after-work relaxation time at the gym is similarly interrupted by panicked cries that the baby might have a temperature and to please stop at the local Wrong-Aid to pick up the latest advance in rectal thermometer. Finally home at 10:00pm you find baby mischievously smiling at you as if everything preceding that moment was actually some elaborate ruse to bring you home for "play-time," and that nothing what-so-ever is actually wrong at all. After half an hour's rousing game of "peek-a-boo" you've given up on all the work you were going to do at home and even on the few minutes you were hoping to spend reading the day's news. Too tired to even watch the week's installment of American Idol's Surviving Apprentice, you decide maybe you're better off getting some sleep. Once again you begin the ritual of preparing bottles, changing the baby, preparing him for sleep so that perhaps he'll let you get some. By the time all of this is done and your teeth are brushed and ready for bed, you hear the familiar "waaaaa-aaaaahhhhh!" Rushing into his room to see if anything's wrong you again get that familiar mischievous grin, "is it play time?"

If every action has an equal and opposite reaction (Newton's 3rd Law of Motion), then having a baby necessarily means no longer having time for anything else. Throughout your life adding more responsibility seemed to coincide with somehow moving just a little bit faster or sleeping just a little bit less and somehow managing to squeeze most everything in. Children make this careful balance a sheer impossibility. Something's got to give.

Einstein called it correctly: Time and space are relative. The faster you move through your personal space, the less time you seem to have for things you used to think were important. Thankfully, parenthood also brings with it the realization that suddenly nothing is more important that using your precious time for the development and amusement of your child.

This past Sunday, April 2nd 2006, I was coming off a ski slope when I received a phone call that I had lost my grandmother. I had been enjoying a particularly nice day on the mountain. It had just snowed the day before, resulting in that all-too-rare combination of soft, warm sunshine with fresh, fluffy, winter powder. I couldn't help thinking about how much my grandmother would have enjoyed being with us there that day. She had grudgingly accepted the need to go in for surgery to remove a tumor in her lung a few days earlier and died of a post-operative infection.

With her passing, my family not only lost a beloved matriarch, we lost our last direct link to the German Holocaust of European Jewry during World War II. My grandmother had spent her early life in a small town called Aleksandrov, just outside the Polish city of Lodz. When the Germans conquered Poland in September 1939, Europe's largest Jewish community was rounded up into two Ghettos at Lodz and Warsaw. She often told stories of how difficult life was in the Lodz ghetto.

Acquiring basic necessities such as bread and cheese turned into adventure stories of life and death. My Grandmother, who was only 13 at the time, would remove her required yellow Star of David and sneak under the fence into the "Polish" part of town to buy food. She did this fairly frequently, but on one such trip she was caught by the German guards trying to sneak back in to bring the food to her family. She related the conversation between the two Germans to me once, how they argued about whether to shoot her immediately, or bring her in for punishment. When one guard exclaimed "how young, and pretty" she was and "what a waste shooting one such as this" would be, her life was spared but her horror began. She recalled how she was taken into a dark room by the guard and then paused to look at me with pain, only to smile and say "well, thank God you'll never know of such things."

She told me how one morning she remembers chasing her parents who were put on a German truck to ostensibly go to a "work camp." They had made her older sister promise to look after my grandmother and keep her safe while they were gone. Her younger sister, however, was too small to stay behind and went on the truck that day. That was the last she would ever see of them. My grandmother, now 14, and only her older sister would have to make it through the war on their own. They were forced to work as slaves in a German munitions factory. There she spent over a year, making shells for the German army that killed her family. It was there that she would also acquire the beginnings of the tumor in her lung that would eventually lead to her death.

My grandmother's horrors of the Holocaust were far from over. As the end of the war approached, the Germans started becoming nervous about their treatment of the Jews and attempted to start covering their tracks. They cleared the ghettos and factories of Jewish prisoners and shipped them en-masse to concentration camps. My grandmother was forced onto a train where she headed for one of the most notorious of the German death camps: Auschwitz. By this time the Germans were barely ahead of the Russian advance and were "liquidating" as much as possible, as fast as they could. Once my grandmother arrived at Auschwitz she was told that the group she was with would be staying overnight in the barracks as the "sanitation areas" (gas chambers) were full. The next morning, as her turn arrived for gassing and cremation, a new train arrived with fresh bodies for the German death machine. And so it continued for days, until the news of Russian soldiers on the march caused her German captors to flee in panic. She remembered fondly how the Russian soldiers set them all free and how she met my grandfather and fled to Berlin in the aftermath of the war.

There were so many stories of those horrific and fascinating days. Stories of how she and my grandfather had booked tickets on an ocean-liner bound for the United States when news of David Ben-Gurion's declaration of the Jewish State of Israel reached Berlin. There were stories of how my grandfather stubbornly refused to travel to America declaring that "finally, Jews have a home of their own!" and that they would be going to Israel. Stories of the beginnings of the State of Israel and how the combined Arab armies invaded the fledgling country to try and finish the work that Hitler had started. Stories of how the sister who saved her life back in the Lodz Ghetto lost her husband in the Israeli War of Independence. There were so many awful stories she told, but not every story was disturbing.

Despite terrible shortages of food and supplies in the early days of Israeli independence, my grandparents managed to provide for two young daughters. They eventually bought a small apartment and scraped together the money for a modest neighborhood clothing store. The two daughters eventually married and one of them, my mother, ended up moving to the US after-all, following my father who had come to America to study. My mother had three children, two boys and a girl, rounding out my grandmother's seven grandchildren. She called us "her miracles" wearing a reminder of every one of our names on a charming gold necklace until the day she died. She often told me how lucky she felt to "be blessed with seven grandkids and already two great grandkids," after everything she had been through. She and her sister were all that escaped of a once large and proud family and she always smiled at how well everyone was doing and saw our success as a "slap in the face" to her German oppressors of so many years ago.

As I sat with my wife, sister, and father in the shadow of those beautiful snowy mountains last Sunday, I remembered so many of her stories. Mostly, though, I remembered the times we spent together. We lived on different continents, but visited frequently. My visits to Israel to see her and other family and friends were typical enough, the moments that really stood out where her visits to the States. We took her to Hawaii where she couldn't get over "being in Honolulu," a childhood conceit for the end of the world. She joined us on a ski trip in the mountains of Utah, scenery that reminded her a lot of pre-war Poland and ice-skating as a little girl. The last time she came to visit was two years ago to celebrate my wedding, the happiness she exuded that night will forever indelibly be etched in my memory.

Last Sunday I lost a grandmother, a pillar of strength, a living history, and a friend. I can't imagine what it will be like the next time I'm in Israel and won't be able to visit her for lunch or a quick game of Gin-Rummy, her favorite. I know, however, that she would be smiling looking down on my family and that of all of my cousins. To her we will always be a miracle that the Germans, and all the horrors of war she had to endure, could never take away. Goodbye Savta (Hebrew for Grandma), we'll miss you always.