Friday morning thoughts

 A while ago, one of my very good friends here in Blogland asked me how my English, which was so bad at first, improved so much. I told him that I learn languages ​​quickly, and it's true. I learned German as a child just by listening to conversations between my mother and grandmother, and that's how I also learned French and even Yiddish from neighbors' conversations on the street. There were many Holocaust survivors among the neighbors at the time, and almost everyone spoke Yiddish when they didn't want children to understand. I understood.                                                                                                                            From here I also moved on to thinking about how goals change, there were times here in blogland when I was looking for security and support. During times when it was difficult here (back then I didn't know it could be even harder), every kind word gave me the illusion of protection and I looked for it, although it was only words, but it was also something. At the time, there were two strong and sturdy American men who were very supportive of my blog and who I was, until one of them wrote to me that he could no longer withstand the attacks of the trolls that came to him because of me and he disappeared, and the other stopped writing for his own reasons. The heroic men left me alone in the battle.                                        When the really tough times came on October 23rd I noticed that there were people who couldn’t operate in a vacuum and needed someone real to vent their anger, opinions and feelings to, and they turned that on me, as if I really had any influence on what was happening around me.

Someone even asked in their post if they could ask me to tell our government to do all sorts of things.

I became more cautious and confused. Old friends disappeared, but new and wonderful people arrived, and for that I am grateful.                                                                                                                                               I'm still very cautious and also busy with this strange adventure called survival, a kind of real-time reality show. I don't drive at night because you never know if there will be an alarm, about once every two days I run to the shelter, if I finish my shower at the time I like I see it as some kind of small victory or miracle,                                                                                                                                             I recognize an adventurous part of myself that tells itself what interesting and crazy times we live in, but inside me there is also a cowardly woman who is equally frightened by the sounds of mice at night.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 A picture of my daughter, from a long time ago.

Quiet life

 As if there were no shortage of dramas in our lives, yesterday there was extreme weather, extreme heat and very strong winds and with them came a huge fire. Everything happened here around me.

I was not at home. Like every Wednesday I was in charge of the children's driver, feeding and enjoying them, I saw everything on TV and wondered how I would get home. Although lately I always wonder how I will get home because of the missiles, but this time it was different.

Flames of fire on the scale of the Los Angeles fires, main roads were closed, people were forced to abandon their cars on the road and flee, towns were evacuated and there was great drama.                                     All of this happened around my house, but my community is still not evacuated. Independence Day celebrations were supposed to start, but everything was canceled. In any case, no one feels like celebrating at this time.                                                                                                                                                                   In the afternoon, my daughter and I decided that maybe I should drive in daylight, which I've been doing lately anyway because of the missiles. We checked on our phone and saw that the road was safe, and so I arrived home safely again.

The air is still full of the smell of smoke, but the wind has calmed down and the temperatures have dropped. All that remains is to wait for the next drama.

Friday

 You can now tell 3 minutes before the alarm that a missile has been launched from Yemen. The army activated a new app and it did work for me this morning at 6:30.

It was definitely different going to the shelter before the alarm and waiting. I was the first, second came the dog Bella, who never waits for her family members when the alarm sounds. The athletic mother arrived barefoot with the child, who also ran barefoot to the shelter at 6:30 in the morning.

We heard the echoes of the explosions, waited ten minutes, and returned to normal life, as if nothing had happened.                                                                                                                                                                       

The afternoon of Passover

 I really liked the previous post. Writing about food and holiday atmosphere felt normal again. When I write about missiles and alarms I feel a bit like a victim, and I don't like it, but it's the reality I can't ignore. Still, I felt really good when it seemed like I could pretend everything was okay again.                                               Even the troll who a few days ago wished me that my grandchildren would die in war and threatened me that they would come back to eliminate me too, also wrote one comment, something about the government, I don't really read everything he or she writes, before I delete, but he or she was quieter than ever.

I decided that I would only write about good, positive things, I sat down and read John Gray's blog and almost had time to write a comment and then the following thing happened-                                                                  My son, who is a subscriber to some Telegram group that announces the launch of missiles from Yemen before the alarms, came and said that we should go to the shelter because a missile had launched from Yemen. It was about five minutes before and saved us the running. I left John's blog and walked with him more or less leisurely to the shelter. We went down the twenty steps underground, and sat on the white plastic chairs. In the meantime, he called some neighbors and informed them that an alarm had been set off. The elderly neighbors had no way to get to the shelter quickly and there were no protected rooms in the house, but it's always good to know in advance.                                                                                                     And indeed the alarm came after five minutes. First came to the shelter the dog Bella, who always makes sure to run first, crying and scared and just wants to be petted and that's what we do. Then the family of young athletes with their small children.

We are supposed to wait ten minutes in the shelter after the alarm because that's when the fragments of the interceptor missiles fall in our area. Since these are ballistic missiles, their fragments are the size of a regular missile, and that's definitely unpleasant.                                                                                                            We did wait the ten minutes, and then I went back to writing the comment on John's blog.

Our Passover

 This was our table yesterday. We decided to celebrate Passover a day early, because we still count our steps at night. Today is the real day of the holiday and we know who likes to interrupt us, so we decided to be clever and it was excellent.

The table was simple, but everything was delicious. The wonderful roast was prepared by the 13-year-old grandson, and it felt like an experienced grandmother had cooked it.                                                                           The "gefilte fish" which is actually traditional fish patties in a sweet sauce, a favorite dish only for me and my daughter, was bought in advance in jars, because we no longer have grandmothers to make it, but it tasted as if they had made it.                                                                                                           There was also chopped liver that my daughter made, excellent and delicious as we remembered from previous years, and of course matzot, which is the "bread" of Passover, thin, crispy and dry. Some love it and some really suffer from the idea that you have to eat it on Passover. We eat everything and therefore love it too. It was pleasant and happy and delicious.

New morning

 I really love the writer Natalia Ginzburg, born in Palermo in 1916, died in 1991. I have read every book of hers that has been translated into Hebrew.

Yesterday when I ran to the shelter at one o'clock in the afternoon I remembered a line from her book "The Little Traits", she writes about "the sirens that wounded the sky in the middle of the night and we woke the children up and went with them", something like that, that was their reality in Italy during World War II, and those are exactly my thoughts, sometimes when I sit in those minutes in the shelter, twenty steps underground, I think to myself this is an experience of other times,

Then we come out and our lives seem to be similar to the lives of everyone else in the world, but there is one part of the soul that anxiously awaits the next time.

Our nights

These are the chocolate eggs I bought today at the little store here that has everything. I'll put every two eggs in a bag, and I hope I don't forget the bags at night when I run to the shelter.

Usually the alarms are in the wee hours of the night and I'm always amazed by the three little children, ages three, four, and five, who come running with their pyjamas and barefoot to the shelter.

My heart goes out to them, and I want to give them something sweet.

They run about five hundred meters from their house to the shelter, and sit there with us until they hear the sounds of explosions, wait another ten minutes, and everyone goes home.

The other night I wasn't ready at three in the morning, I put my shoes on the wrong way around, and even when I noticed it, there was no time to fix it, so I ran with them to the shelter. No one noticed.