By Donald H. Harrison

Thanks to my wife Nancy's extraordinary "lay away "plan, I think our 4-year-old grandson Shor now has a new hero to talk about in addition to the fabled Batman—Noah, the great Ark builder.

Nancy loves a bargain, and having had the experience of raising our own two children to adulthood, she knows that no matter how big, or what grade level, the item is that she buys, Shor eventually will grow into it.  So she lays away items for Shor's future in the nooks and crannies of our cluttered home.  The problems is that we often forget where those nooks and crannies are.

However, this last weekend we were lucky.  Shor had a sleepover at Grandma's and Grandpa's in conjunction with Friday evening Shabbat services and Pre-School and Torah School dinner at Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego. Attacking some of the clutter, Nancy found a shirt that she had purchased in 2002 in the Cayman Islands for Shor, that just fits him today. It was one of those T-shirts that when exposed to the sun changes colors.  The design on the shirt shows animals crowded onto Noah's Ark.

After Shor ran in and out of the house a few dozen times to see the shirt change to color and then back again, we had the opportunity to talk about Noah.  From the treasure trove of Costco, Nancy had picked up  Noah's Ark Book and Play Mat Kit, created by McGraw Hill's Brighter Child Division. The kit includes a book retelling the biblical tale of Noah as well as pairs of toy elephants, giraffes, camels, monkeys, zebras and goats, which can be lined up two-by-two on a floor mat. With some assembly, Noah and an Ark can be fashioned from cardboard to provide the animals temporary shelter.

After reading the story to Shor, we explained that Noah's Ark was a biblical tale known around the entire world. Next,  I queued up a videotape of Fantasia 2000, by the good folks of Disney, to show Shor an animated version of the story in which Donald Duck is Noah's "helper." Somehow, he and Daisy Duck are separated on the Ark, each thinking the other has been left behind. All this is animated to the rhythm of "Pomp and Circumstances" in a performance of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine.

While we watched the video, I remembered that Nancy had put away a children's book that we had purchased in Bermuda in 1999 called The Flood, which was adapted, designed and illustrated by Daron Lowe. This was purchased in the year preceding the marriage of Shor's parents, Sandi and Shahar Masori, and two years before his birth. Talk about contingency planning!

While Shor played with his little animals, I tore up the house looking for The Flood, until Nancy recalled it was tucked away in her office.  Whereas, Noah's Ark Book and Play Mat Kit had glossed over the fact that all the people except those in Noah's family died in the flood,  Lowe's version told how "God looked down at the wickedness of people and He regretted creating them." 

I was wondering how I would explain how God could do such a thing, when we came upon a later page, which seemed to do the trick: "God gave the people a last chance to escape the flood but they only laughed. 'It has never rained on the earth before. Noah is just an old fool,' they said."

So, on we read together, while looking at illustrations of the flood waters rising around the evil people, before getting on to the happy conclusion of the story with its dove, olive branch and  rainbow.  The Flood was beautifully illustrated with an unusual color palette.

Shor and I  examined a globe, and then an atlas, to see where the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are. We also took note that the book and play mat kit had been created in Columbus, Ohio, and printed in China.  So we went back to the map and globe to see where they are.

When Nancy joined our conversation, Shor recounted the story of Noah to her.  He explained that there were bad people on the earth, and that they were purple, and that they died in the flood, and went to heaven, where after God lectured them, He let their spirits return to earth to become good people.  Shor's idea about  "purple people" came from his perception of the illustrations in the book from Bermuda.  As for that round trip from earth to heaven for the souls of those wicked people, I'll admit to offering our grandson just a little bit of "midrash" to deal with his anticipated questions. It seemed like a reasonable thing for God to do, and I challenge anyone to prove that it couldn't have happened that way.

Anyway, said Shor, continuing the narration for his Grandma, after a white bird that looks like a pigeon brought an olive branch back to the Ark.  So they landed on a mountain and the animals got to go back on the land. 

I told Shor that I know a man named Sandy Goodkin who collects ceramic Noah's Arks from all over the world. Nancy that  we have a ceramic of a white dove that  his very own great-aunt Barbara once had painted and fired  for us. Shor excitedly asked to see the piece that had been in view all his life.  Now, however, it took on significance.

While Nancy and I reflected on how educational all those lay-away items turned out to be, Shor went to play with the  toy animals and the little Ark in the other room.  "Vrooom-vroom," we heard him say.  A couple of the animals were inside the Ark, which he now had converted into a rocket ship to take them on other adventures.  There was one thing that I particularly liked about the Ark being—in Shor's word—"transformed" into a rocket ship, in the manner of Ms Frizzle's Magic School Bus.   At least he didn't turn the Ark into the Batmobile.