Week 2 Prompts

Those who forget history are forced to relive it, first as tragedy, then as farce.

“Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism.”
David Ben-Gurion

I only learned about my fathers' part in world war-II late into my forties. I heard for the first time about my mothers' family only a year before she passed away. I never spoke, or could understand, my fathers' mother tongue (Hungarian) and my mother's tongue was never my mother tongue.

I am a first generation, Israeli born, a Sabra. So I, together with my friends, are the live representatives of this social experiment called: creating a new image...We Sabras, like the fruit of the big cactus plants, growing wild everywhere in Israel, were supposed to be at the same time, tough and prickly on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside. Strong, unemotional, take control kind of people who were taught to believe that power comes from the barrel of the gun.

We were not supposed to be like “them”, them, being six million, faceless, wimpy, Jews, who did not know how to fend for themselves. “This will never happen again”, was the mantra we grew up on, reciting it on the top of Masada, where another group of Jews, decades before, took their own life so they will not become slaves to the Romans. 

But being a second generation to a Holocaust surviving family, this part of my history was kept away from me.  We walked around it like a well kept family secret that no one wants to talk about, but is never-the-less still there. It was in the old black and white pictures in the falling apart albums, it was in the refusal of my parents to speak the languages brought from the “old country”, it was in the stories that should have, but were not told.

Looking back at my childhood and watching my children and their friends coming into adulthood I wonder about the results of this. I am not sure if what we are witnessing now is the tragedy, or the farce but I have a feeling that something went wrong.

 I think about my parents’ generation. Did they lose their faith and failed to give us, in place of it, another? Did we, by having to prove that we are different become confused and disoriented? Did we stray off course? Did we lose our core? Did we lack a strong sense of who we are and a sense of continuity? The fact is that the new generation, who is now coming into its own, is so much different then what we expected them to be. Somewhere, somehow, all the beliefs and hopes and teachings created very disturbing results.

 I don’t know how inner strength turns into aggressiveness. How lack of continuity and respect to the past develops into detachment and indifference, how not having faith translates into deficiency in strong ethical base. The only theory I have is that when utilizing force as the only fall back alternative, the price tag is rather high and the payment, subtle at the beginning, becomes more and more obvious with time.

The stuff I've collected over the years in my little box/bureau drawer/keepsake chest marks every step of my way.

Few weeks ago, on a spur of the moment, I bought a fire safe box. Nothing fancy, the kind every one can buy in Walmart. I never had one, nor had the need to own one. It must have been growing older, and wiser, that made me realize all the possible dangers of holding irreplaceable documents, and pictures, in a card box.

Until that moment I lived in an utter bliss, completely blind to the possible dangers. Over the years I managed to collect a nice amount of documents:  school certificates dating back to my elementary school years, my daughters’ birth certificates and every school document I ever received, professional licenses, and even a will. In the last few years, as a result of my genealogy research, some very precious evidences of my family past existence were also added.

So now that I had a safe box in my possession I dug out all my treasures and after few unsuccessful tries to fit them all inside, had to face the harsh reality. This pile of papers, pictures and assorted memorabilia will have to be sorted out. I will not be able to fit everything in.

 Sorting and deciding which of these items will be deemed “not so important”, and which will be granted a safe, fire protected, environment, proved to be harder than I anticipated.  How to weight my school fourth grade certificate against my grandmothers' original birth certificate, dating all the way back to 1879. The picture of the soon-to-be-my-husband, and me, on the Tel-Aviv marina, just hours before we'll discover that we had missed our flight to our planned wedding, in the US. This second temple, supposedly, original coin from my days as an aspiring archeologist. And how about Puffs', my dead German Sheppard, tag? Or this shell I brought, years ago, from my first visit, while still in the army, from Sharem-el-sheik. It is one of this shells that when you put next to your ear you can hear the sea humming softly inside.

With every item priceless and if lost irreplaceable, there was only one reasonable act I could think about. I repacked the safe box and returned it to the store. “Was anything wrong with the product?” the sale person asked me. “No, it was fine “, I answered. “There was something wrong with me...” and with this sentence still hanging in the air I turned and left the store, back to a life of looming danger.

It was the first, but not the best--or was it?

My first big love was the desert.

The year was 1967. The six day war had just ended and I went to the Sinai to check on the soldiers from the reserve unit I was in charge of. It might have been the fact that I flew there and it was my first plane ride ever. It might have been the sense of adventure, landing on the half destroyed air strip. But it probably was the open space, so open, so empty.  “Sharem el Sheik, we are here again, you were always in our hearts”, I found myself humming the lyrics of a very popular song as I stepped off the plane and looked around.  The jagged mountains seemed as if they were penetrating the sky and the sea had a color of blue that I could not believe really existed. It felt like a sharp blow to my stomach. It took my breath away, I have never fully recovered.

And then there was Eric. He came, no, not on a white horse, but on the next best thing, an open roof, dust covered jeep.  He materialized, so it seemed, out of nowhere but there he was; light colored curls, blue eyes and a big smile.  I surrendered without even pretending to fight. For three days he showed up every evening with his loyal jeep and we went riding into the desert. He knew of places that no one but the locals knew. We stopped by hidden coves where the water was warm and quiet. I put my hands in the salty water and felt the fish so sleek, as they went through my open fingers and the corals rough and spiky.  He accelerated on open stretches of sand, and I had to hold on to the side rail and could feel the wind caress my face.  He took me up the hills and high up I got a once in a life time look at this primal land.

 On my last night we sat on a big flat rock at the water edge. Small ripples of water were shining in the pale light of the stars.  There were stars everywhere in the sky and in the water. He put his hand around my shoulders and I leaned against him. It was so peaceful.

That was the last time we met.  Later that evening it turned out that while I was happy with watching the water, and the stars, he had another plan in mind. My knight, with the dusty jeep, that had all the right moves and words, transformed in front of my eyes and became just another ordinary guy. The ride back was very quiet and then he was gone.

And as for the desert, this is a whole different story. The desert was, and still is, a big love.

 

Week 2 Theme: Perspective

 

“You promised a dove with a branch of olive…” -The winter of seventy three.

Sometimes a sentence, or even just a line from a familiar song can bring back a whole period of life. That is how I felt on that night on 2005 sitting in the back seat of my daughters’ car when the song came up on the radio. The car had just emerged from around the last curve on the road from Rosh Pina to Tiberias and I could see the first lights of the town mirrored in the surface of the lake, The Lake of Galilee. On the other side of the lake I could barely make out the outline of the mountains, the Golan Heights.

“We are the children of the winter

Of the year seventy three…”

The song, usually performed on Memorial Day, brought back a flood of memories. The winter of seventy three was the winter of the Yom Kippur war. Hearing the song I remembered myself at twenty three, in the midst of the war, sitting in a small café in Tibeirias, looking at the same dark water. We got together, that night, few soldiers, and managed to find a jeep and drive down from Kuneitra, where we were stationed, searching for a hot shower and a cup of coffee.

Dado,one of the reserve officers, and I were sitting on the open deck, talking. I was telling him how I would like to go back to school but thought I was too old to take on a new commitment. He, at least twenty years older than me, was giggling softly in the dark “it is never too late to do something you really like”, these were his exact words. That night when we got back inside the café I couldn’t locate my army jacket. The one I spend much time and efforts getting from our unit headquarters, in Rosh Pina. In its pockets were my reading glasses and my address book. Later that night, on the way back, we managed to get the jeep stuck in the mud, few yards away from the entrance to the base.

“You were tired men

Thanking their good luck

You were worried young women

And all you wanted was love”

The song on the radio kept playing …

When the Yom-Kippur war started I was on my second year of teaching. I was home working on my lesson plan for the next day when the sirens went on. The utter quiet of the day was shattered by the radio calling for the different army units, including mine, to report in. My base, it turned out, was moved while I was in school and with the move I gained a new title and responsibilities. I was to be in charge of the welfare of the soldiers in my army unit. No one, including me, had any idea what that meant. The soldiers were somewhere in the field and I was miles away.

For a whole week I stayed behind in the home base wondering what was I suppose to be doing. It was about being the contact person between the reserve soldiers and their families back home, I was told.But with the soldiers being at war, the families were more concerned with their safe return than anything I could possibly tell them. The days dragged and were full of rumors, and stories, filtering in through people who came to the base for few hours and left.

Finally I was allowed to go to Kuneitra, a major Syrian town before the war and my unit head quarters at the time. Miri, who was to be my help, came with me. When we got there everything was covered with snow which did very little to hide the destruction. We got the” deluxe” accommodation. A big room with a fire place. That was it. No beds and no bathroom, only a front row view of the destroyed main street. In the weeks to come I managed to arrange few trips, closer to the front, to meet with the soldiers themselves. In between constant moves forward into small, even more destroyed villages, and back to our mother base in Rosh Pina, I built with Miri a support system for the families.

“When we were born

The country was wounded and sad”

The song kept going on.

“You looked at us, you hugged us

You tried to find solace through us

When we were born the old men blessed

With tearing eyes

They said “we wish these kids

Will not go to war”

The war of seventy three brought a screeching end to an era of innocence. To the elation and sense of invincibility produced by the prior one, the six days war. “Sharm-el-sheik, we returned to you once again”, “Jerusalem of gold”, these songs reflected the jovial mood. My narrow country widened. We could visit the other side of the walls that divided Jerusalem, the Wailing Wall was once again accessible, I fell in love with the unending, wild beauty, of the Sinai desert. All of this changed as a result of the Yom Kippur unexpected attack and the political aftermath. We, as a nation stopped loving ourselves, not to mention being loved by others.

While all this gear shifting was going on I was busy trying to remain accessible to the soldiers in my unit, and their families. And as the army in its infinite wisdom was moving us back, and forth, from one destroyed village to another I was  trying to get us, the few women soldiers, an appropriate winter gear and locate a warm shower in the evenings.

“You promised a dove

With a branch of olive

You promised peace at home

You promised spring and lots of flowers

You promised to fulfill promises.”

My army service started with the war of 1967 and ended with the “Yom Kippur” war. In the spring the war was officially over. I did not return to my teaching job. Instead, I left by the end of the summer to study in the U.S for my master degree in counseling education.” It is never too late to pursue something you really like.”The sentence is going with me ever since. It takes me back to that night on the deck over the quiet black water, my lost army jacket and the promise of peace still waiting to be fulfilled.

The winter of seventy three by :Shmu'el Hasfari -1995

“We are the children of the winter

Of the year seventy three

You first dreamt us

In the morning after the battle ended

You were tired men

Thanking their good luck

You were worried young women

And all you wanted was love

And when you got pregnant with us

In the winter of seventy three

You wanted to fill with your body

What the war took away

When we were born

The country was wounded and sad

You looked at us, you hugged us

You tried to find solace through us

When we were born the old men blessed

With tearing eyes

They said “we wish these kids

Will not go to war”

Your faces in an old photo prove

That you were speaking from your heart

When you promised to do everything for us

And turn enemies to friends

You promised a dove

With a branch of olive

You promised peace at home

You promised spring and lots of flowers

You promised to fulfill promises

We are the children of the winter

Of the year seventy three

We grew up we are in the army now

With the gun and helmet on our head

We too know how to make love

To laugh and cry

We are men and women too

Like you we know how to dream babies

And that is why we will not press or demand

And we will not threaten

When we were little you said

Promises needed to be fulfilled

If you need strength we will give you

We will not hold back, we just wanted to whisper

We are the children of that winter

The winter of seventy three.

Week 1, prompts

1. Alone in a quiet room. Listen. What do you hear?

The fire cracking in the woodstove,

 The refrigerator grumbling and moaning,

 The trickle of water in the aquarium,

 A drip from the kitchen faucet,

 The lights over my head murmuring quietly,

The computer monotonous and unvarying hum

 My big white cat is nudging at my hand, trying to push into its favorite spot on the computers’ keyboard. We fight it out for few minutes and then disappointed, she heaves a deep sigh and stretches next to me purring.

Daily noises I don’t usually pay attention to but now, trying to sort them, one by one, I realize I live in the midst of a complete cacophony. I try to concentrate and block them out but by now, they become more and more noticeable and disturbing, quickly closing on me.

2. Alone in a quiet room. What do you see?

The fire I just started in the woodstove. A skill I mastered not too long ago and compliment myself on. I like the repetitive process of choosing the logs, one by one, evaluating them for their burning qualities and lining them just so. Tucking some paper between them or cheating with a fire starter. I light the well constructed assembly of wood and nurse the small flame into life, with careful attention. It’s always a challenge. I get lost in the dancing flames with a deep sense of satisfaction. A mission well done, I feel genuinely accomplished.  

3. Alone in a quiet room. But what's really happening?

With the computer screen in front of me and my hands on the keys, I immerse myself in the familiar noises of the house, engulfing me,  and within minutes I am transported into my “real” world. A journey of million miles can start with just one finger and one key.

The world at my fingertips, how potent is that,

 Only lately this magical victorious trio; I, my fingers and the computer aren’t working as well. My writing energy seems to have lost its shine. I stumble amid the words; and they refuse to cooperate. I glue and stick and paste with no apparent success.

So I read, novels, short stories, self-help books by self-indulgent philosophers, nonfiction even magazines, a downpour of words that are not mine.

“Can’t give up”, I tell myself.

“Temporary dry spell, that’s all it is”,

“It’s all about self discipline”, I coax myself into not giving up.

So here I am with my fingers on the keyboard and my eyes fixed on the screen, still writing.

Week 1, journal

First week journal

Jan 10^th - Tuesday

We returned to Portland, late last night, after a month of vacation in Israel. Long tiring flight that became longer than usual because my husband and I got this bright idea that stopping along the way will make the lengthy trip more bearable.  Five hours to Frankfurt, four hours of layover, nine hours to Philadelphia, four more hours of layover. Short, one hour to Portland in a small jumpy plane completed the torture.

Dragging myself to the luggage conveyor belt I realize we’ve been awake, and travelling, for almost thirty six hours and yet we left on a Monday, and it is still Monday. No wonder it seemed so long, we were travelling back in time. I could marvel at the wonders of modern travelling and creating” time wrinkles” but all I can think about is” thank god this is over”, and how I long for a normal bathroom and a moment of true privacy.

Jan 11^th - Wednesday

A whole month of living with my daughter, spending time with my two years old granddaughter and visiting with family and friends. Vacation in Israel is never “just a vacation”, it’s a constant reflection on the past teamed with “what ifs” and a lingering bittersweet feel. Could things be different had we stayed?  Did we betray a trust, or duty? What has become of the state our parents dreamed for us? Are we somehow responsible for the failures?

The smells, the noises, even the air so familiar on my skin. The language rolling with ease, the humor easy to grasp, the songs find an echo in my heart.

This is the only place where people still call me by my nick-name and each time I hear it I realize, there are less and less of them, one of the last threads connecting me to my childhood soon will vanish.

Jan 12^th - Thursday

Third night back and I am still jet lagged. I pace the house at night and fall asleep during the day, finding the book I just held in my hand, lying on the floor, or staring at the same line on the computer screen realizing I dozed off again. It is as if while we can transport our bodies from one side of the globe to the other the rest of us drag behind refusing to adjust.

I keep thinking about Paulo Coelho’s’ new book “Aleph”, I couldn’t resist buying the day before we left, and read all through the flight back. It’s about the everyday routine that gets us stuck and journeys in time and space that help us gain new insights and revitalize our energy. Everything starts with” Aleph”, the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet , OK I know all that already, the banality of the premise instead of helping to  clarify my mind is making me mad.

Jan 13^th - Friday

Finally almost a full night of sleep, or at least sleep on the “right” time. I am amazed at how a journey of a full month starts already to fade at the edges. In some bizarre way every visit is like a very long class reunion where everyone I meet relays (again) the details that compose his or her life. On the personal level we trade family information, kids, grandkids, who got married (or divorced), found a job, finished school. It is hard to resist the need to compare, evaluate, and check myself against this mirror of my old friends.

 “Home is where the heart is…” I recite the cliché to my cousin who wants to know if I miss my Israeli culture. “Oh, running a motel is quite a challenge”, I ensure my ninety years old aunt, who wants to know if I don’t miss my “real” career as a slave to the department of Education in Israel.

I place a stone on my parents’ grave, taking in the stunning Jerusalem vista.

A visit to Israel is never “just” a visit.

Jan 14^th - Saturday

“Almost there”, I sigh with frustration looking at the clock next to my bed showing 5:00am. Few more days and my inner clock will catch up with the outside one. Still I know I will miss the seesaw between the here and there, the known routine, I know so well, and holding on to the last threads of my journey.  I will even miss the long quiet hours of the night when I can click on the computer with no disruptions, except for the time ticking away.

Jan 15^th - Sunday

Clearing the snow from the last storm,

Breaking the forming sheet of ice,

Cleaning the house and reclaiming it,

 Some cooking,

A lengthy conversation with my youngest about her new boyfriend and life in general,

Talking to my other daughter about her not-so-new, maybe soon to become ex-boyfriend, which I did not even meet yet.

Some TV in-between the weekend football.

I think I’ve finally landed.

Jan 16^th – Monday

You take yourself with you, wherever you go

“You can climb the highest mountain, go where no one's ever gone
On a crowded city sidewalk, you might find yourself alone
In the middle of the desert, anywhere the wind blows
Son you take yourself with you, wherever you go
Son you take yourself with you, wherever you go”

I am not sure who originally coined this phrase that I know in several versions. I still ponder its validity especially before, during, and upon returning from our yearly trip to Israel.  If you can never really lose yourself you might as well stay where you are and save a lot of time and money. But true or not, I know I will not trade the experiences of the past eleven years since we left.   I am glad I took myself with me; it proved to be a pretty good companion.

Week 1, know thyself/the writer

Week 1, Part 1, Autobiography of the writer as a writer

A.

I write because I write, it sounds rather simplistic and I know there should be more to it; another layer of meaning that fuels this constant need to spend hours in front of an empty page or a blinking computer screen. I dig deeper, searching for an answer for what seems at this point as an obsession rather than just a harmless activity, something to fill my days with.

Yes, I love words, I like their feel and touch. I enjoy the way they roll off my tongue and how when put together, just right, they posses so much beauty, it moves me and make me hold my breath with appreciation.  I developed close relations with words; those that I like and those that I don’t and try to move out of my way. Ever since I started to write I pay more attention; my listening skills are more astute, and as words and phrases go in and out I catch them in mid air, hold them in my hand and make them mine. 

Words help me remember; I am thankful for that. My compulsive implementation of words and the never ending search for new topics to write about, shakes the dust off old forgotten memories, bring them up to the surface and make them live again. 

But is that all? In a moment of genuine sincerity I come up with something I did not think about until now. Writing is creation; something out of nothing is being formed. Writing is power, as a writer one can make the world stop and pay attention even if just for a minute; pay attention to the words, the story, but most of all, pay attention to me. 

B.

How do you know that you are a writer?

When can you claim this title for yourself?

When people ask you what you do, do you look straight into their eyes and in a calm, and confident voice, declare: I am a writer, that who I am.

You marvel at the surprise, you are inwardly amused by what is not being said:

“We always knew…the signs were there…certain aloofness…so quiet…always watching…now it is all clear…a writer”.

You secretly are using this new acquired labeling as an instrument to attain more freedom. 

A writer needs a lot of “me”, time and space, you like that.

A writer can sit in public places and watch people, you like that too.

The aura of uniqueness with a pinch of secrecy fits you like a glove.

You are a writer, so go ahead and write something.

C.

Like her father she wrote a diary; pages and more pages, notebooks that accumulated and piled everywhere. Small and skinny ones, fat with wide lines, blue covers, green covers and at times even pricey leather bound ones. When she leafed through them she could examine the changes in her handwriting, see how the letters formed and reformed over the years, just like her.

 “The Aleph”, at first, was one straight line teamed with a round, slightly curved line, to complete the traditional appearance.  Few years later in the more radical form, the soft curve gave way to angular lines, a bolder statement delivered “I am my own person, don’t take me for granted”.

On a whim she would pick a notebook, let it open on a random page and run her eyes along the lines. Things she forgot, problems real or imagined, people long gone from her life, would peer out from the pages and fill her with a mixture of melancholy and longing.

Ten years old, eighteen, twenty seven, forty, my, how the time flew leaving behind only words.