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Notes from
Israel: Part
As I was
walking towards passport control at Ben Gurion airport in Tel
Aviv, I fell into conversation with a co-traveler. That’s the
way it is in Israel. You talk to everybody. It had been many
years since the gentleman had visited Israel, so he was stunned
by the beauty of the new airport. The walkways are filled with
light. One long wall is built entirely of Jerusalem stone,
another boasts ancient mosaics, while yet another bursts with
wildly colorful posters announcing Israel’s attractions. There
are water fountains in the central waiting area, coffee kiosks
and restaurants and comfortable leather chairs to collapse in.
I’ve been
returning for so many years that I’ve grown blind to everything
but the long walk toward the immigration booths and rescuing my
bags from the luggage carousel. I thanked my new acquaintance
for reawakening my appreciation. We chatted until my bags came
and I headed out. As usual, the lobby was a madhouse of friends,
relatives and people holding signs with people’s names on them.
I searched for Benny, our wonderful Nahariya driver who comes
for me every year. It’s when I hug Benny and step out into the
Tel Aviv heat that I know I’ve survived yet another trip home.
I sink into
Benny’s airconditioned cab and spend the next two hours gazing
out the windows to see what has changed. We chat and listen to
his favorite 1950s oldies station while singing along to Paul
Anka and Connie Francis, and I’m amazed that I haven’t fallen
asleep. I usually do. But it’s when I fall into mom’s arms that
I really relax, relieved that I can do this yet one more time.
Unwilling to let go, I wonder yet again, how we manage to live
so far apart. This is the best part of my trip — the very
beginning when the weeks stretch out ahead, the hours and days
of not thinking about anything but enjoying my time with Mom and
my second home.
Here in the
searing Israeli heat I shed clothes, to-do lists, and stress and
actually sleep through the night without getting up once to see
what time it is. I wear my watch, but it becomes a bracelet, not
the tyrant that rules my daily life. Glancing at it from sheer
habit I think to myself that I should just take it off, but
somehow I’m still not brave enough for that.
Mom tells me
that she has read somewhere that Nahariya is one of the most
humid places in Israel and I believe her. Opening the windows is
akin to opening an oven that has been blended with a sauna, yet
I keep opening them, sure that cool air will waft through
eventually. I’m either an eternal optimist or an idiot or both.
I begin
drinking water constantly and don’t stop until I leave. The
first week I’m there it at least cools off at night. Every
evening at about 9, the wind shifts and a cool breeze blows in.
Mom and I open the windows and sleep comfortably, waking up with
well rested energy. But by the second week, when Steve and the
girls arrive, the cooling breeze has disappeared and the heat is
continuous.
The first
week is Mom-and-me week. We go out in the morning before the
heat becomes brutal and try some of the new restaurants. We go
to a favorite coffee bar, and I begin what I think of as my
coffee negotiations. Israelis are very finicky about their hot
coffee and have myriads of ways to drink it. But they are still
relatively uneasy about ice coffee. Ice-café has always been
classified as a dessert, served with ice-cream and crushed ice
and whipped cream, or at the very least, lots of milk and sugar.
Plain ice coffee is a foreign country. So when I see something
called an “Icespresso” advertised as espresso and ice, I get
excited. Finally, I no longer have to go into a lengthy
description for a skeptical barista.
But when I
order my Icespresso and see her filling the glass with milk, I
yell for her to stop. I explain to her that all I want is the
espresso with coffee and ice, the way it is advertised, and she
looks at me as if I’m a lunatic. Luckily, another worker shows
her the advertisement, which proves that I still possess a few
of my marbles, but still I begin my usual Israel-ice-coffee
explanation: double espresso, ice, no milk, no ice-cream, no
whipped cream, no nuttin’ for the crazy American. She actually
sighs as she prepares my outlandish request. Three weeks later
when we land in Newark airport on the way home, I encounter a
poor Israeli in a Starbucks line, desperately trying to make the
barista understand what he means by ice coffee. I help him out,
laughing inside.
When Steve
and the girls join us a week later, the atmosphere transforms
from quiet to hectic. Our family hasn’t lived together in a year
and adjustments are exasperating and hilarious. Throughout, Mom
is a trouper. If I were her, I might have thrown us all out. But
we persevere and enjoy, especially since we all know that after
this vacation it will be a long time before we’re all together
again. But we try not to think about that.
August 7, 2008
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