Blog Details: Inner Toddler

My husband and I customarily take a day to explore Jerusalem whenever we come to visit. Saba and Savta watch the kids and we spend the day walking around, eating, watching. It's always great. We usually spend our time in the Old City but on this visit we concentrated on the area called Machane Yehuda. It's a giant fruit, vegetable, candy, plastic container, appliance, broom, spice, fake Levis, pastry and cheap sandals market. It's where I used to shop every Friday morning when I lived in Jerusalem. It is total chaos. We love this place.

So we spent a few hours strolling around. We had a shwarma at a place called Moshiko's, which was next to a barber and across from a mini-synagogue. You know, in case you need to pray while buying your groceries. I guess it's more for the sellers to pop over and do their thing morning, noon and night I wish I had a picture of the five old guys hanging out at the barber. They were adorable. Especially when they halted conversation as a beautiful, big-boobed, Scandinavian tourist walked by. Classic!

Hi. We're going home today. Well, we're flying to London tonight and then to San Francisco tomorrow morning. Anyway, we're at the end of our journey. I would say this was our best trip so far. And even though politically this country is a disaster (maybe more on that later) it is a spectacular place.

Last I wrote I was dealing with a bout of nausea. So annoying. It passed a day or so later but I spent that day thinking about my friend Renee, a blogging friend I met a few months ago. She was dying of cancer, but through her blog, had quite a following.  We used to leave pithy little comments for each other. Heartfelt. Silly. Sometimes serious. Usually not. Her situation was serious enough. I actually felt loved by her, which I know sounds ridiculous, since we never met or even spoke on the phone. I knew her prognosis was bad and that the end was near but somehow I convinced myself that she'd be fine. Her posts and comments to me were so full of life, I could not imagine her any other way.

In the last month or so we stopped hearing from Renee and started hearing from her lovely daughter Angelique so I knew things had turned. In the last post where it seemed it was only a matter of days, hours. She was still suffering but fighting for whatever time she could have with the family she loved so much. I kept wanting to leave comments true to the style of our relationship. Renee! Go to the light! I am sure there is fast speed wireless in the next world! We'll all be waiting for your next dispatch from the great beyond. And tell god I think cancers blows. But I couldn't. It all seemed so grim and unfair.

So the nausea made me think of her. She was always battling nausea and everything else. Always in treatment. Always exhausted. But strong in spirit. And always with a sense of humor, or so it appeared to me anyway. And I thought, crimey, I can't even deal with a little nausea for a day and a half and this incredible woman has been in it for years.

Turns out she died on that Tuesday. And so many of us are feeling the loss.

When Jane asked for suggestions last week for miniature worlds I thought ant hill off the top of my head and then what do we come across the very next day while hiking at Nahal Absor in the Negev? Dozens and dozens of anthills where gargantuan ants spend all day every day hauling bits of our world into their miniature worlds. I wish I had a picture of my thumb next to these puppies because for whatever reason, maybe the toxic chemical plant nearby, they grow bigger than your average city ant.


But not as big as these suckers. The very next evening we went out for a walk at a nearby kibbutz where they have a huge sculpture garden and we came across gigantic ants! So I had to snap those too.Before they gobbled me up!

For more miniature worlds, visit Jane's sidebar. Happy trails!

The last few days have been outstanding. We've mainly stayed in the south going on short hikes, looking for water holes in the desert (because it's unseasonably hot) and playgrounds in the towns we pass through on our way home. The kids are doing great. We took them to the old city of Beer Sheva to buy pita at the oldest pita factory in town. And around the corner is the little Turkish style stone house where my husband lived until he was three. The door his dad built some 37 years ago is still there.




Today was supposed to be another wonderful day. I was supposed to meet a lovely woman that I 'met' though ETSYChai, an ETSY team open to anyone but primarily for Jewish sellers or Israeli sellers or sellers of Judaica or all of the above. I had mentioned to the team that I would be in Israel and few people said they'd be happy to meet me. In the end I planned to drive to Tel Aviv and my husband would drop me off at Nahalat Binyamin which is a great craft market on Tuesdays and Fridays. I love to go even though the stuff there looks about the same year after year. I don't care. It's nice to have a strong coffee and relax and then walk around looking at the goodies. And Tuesdays are always less crowded than Fridays, the only other day it's open. In the end only one woman could meet me, Lisa, which was fine. We seemed to have a fair amount in common - moved to Israel from elsewhere at some point (though we left), young kids, artist, home studio. She makes wonderful papercut art - cards, little boxes, notebooks - beautiful little treasures. Go see her shop and blog. I was excited to meet her. But last night right as I was going to bed I started to feel horribly nauseated. If there's one thing I can't deal with it's nausea. So I basically didn't sleep. And this morning it felt worse. So I emailed her that I couldn't make it and maybe we could reschedule for Friday.

And then I got the call. Where are you? Gulp. She had taken her kids to school and gone straight to the train to meet me. I don't know if you know this about me, but I hate when I fuck up. I HATE it. Not that this keeps me from doing it all the time. But I don't like it one bit. Especially something like this where someone else is involved. I've actually been on her side and wasted my time getting somewhere only to be left hanging. I am usually very conscientious. I don't know why I just didn't call! And now I'm feeling awful because, well I'm nauseated still, and also I deserted this nice person at a cafe in Tel Aviv, so now I have to feel bad about that until I stop feeling bad, because that's what I do. My son has this same quality and I hate seeing it in him too. He hates making mistakes and when he makes them, he is harder on himself than I could ever be.Although he often feels like his shame is enough and he doesn't deserve a secondary punishment for, say, hitting his sister. Not sure about that one.

Today was a beautiful day. We went for a walk in the foothills outside of Jerusalem and brought a picnic. It rained a lot in February so everything was covered in wild flowers which my kids collected in Savta's vitamin boxes. When we got to the perfect spot, which incidentally also overlooked the general area where David beat Goliath, my sister in law, aka Mary Poppins, engaged the kids in some pita-making festivities. No, seriously. She and her boyfriend brought a gas stove and a flat pan and the kids made pita! And it was tasty! Plus they brought home-made olives, garden-grown vegetables and a jam that her boyfriend’s mom made. And there just happened to be a goat farm nearby that sold cheese. So our little picnic became a feast of biblical proportions. And then a snake came by and offered us apples, I turned into a pillar of salt and the earth swallowed us whole. But it was worth it.