I have an unfinished blog series from last summer, and an unfinished post from two summers ago. This time, I told myself, I wouldn't be so ambitious. This time, I told myself, the daily blog will be a simple accounting of what happened and how I'm getting along. The changes in the report, from one day to the next, will tell my story by themselves. We'll see how well I stick to my resolution.
Day 1
Last night at 2:30 a.m. two children and their mother departed for the airport. Neither Michal nor I were able to fall asleep - she was anxious over the visit, and particularly about spending Shabbat in a setting that has become foreign to her over the past two decades (she's planning to do Shabbat by old friends who live in a community much different from our own). I kept having lucid dreams in which I was trapped in situations related to household chores that I only vaguely knew how to deal with (at age 16 I started doing my laundry in my parents' home, but in my own home I don't even know how to turn the machine on). At 2 o'clock we got up, ordered a taxi, and started moving suitcases and children down to the curb. At 2:40 I returned to our all-too-quiet and empty apartment (with only 4 people sleeping inside - since the two older boys prefer to sleep on the roof during the muggy summer nights), and still had a lot of trouble falling asleep.
I set an alarm for 6:40, but only was able to peel myself out of bed when Avigail asked me at 7:25, "Abba, you're not getting up today?", in much the same tone as her mother often does. I dragged myself to a local shul, and returned at 8:15. Elisheva and Noam, the preschoolers, were sitting on the window sill awaiting my return. "Abba, what took you so long?", they asked. I didn't even answer them. I was exhausted. I slothily nudged them along to get dressed and prepared them their morning sandwiches. At 8:30 sharp we left the house to walk to gan (preschool/kindergarten). At 8:30 they close the gates, and only allow stragglers entrance at 9 o'clock. Good thing it's only a 2-minute walk from our house. Good thing they're Israeli, and not Swiss. They slipped into the gate seconds before the guard came and bolted it shut. I wandered back home, daunted at the thought of my 40-minute bike commute in my current state of exhaustion. The heat didn't help any. I saw a city bus drive and was momentarily tempted to bus it today, but I knew that wasn't a real option, since I need to back on time to put the little ones to bed.
At home I lay down for a few minutes, contemplating falling asleep, then got up and started to pack my bag for work. I took a long break to empty my bowels, then finally left the house around 9:15. I got to work a little later than I planned, took my post-ride shower, and sat down at my desk. It was 10:15. I wasn't as tired as I thought I should be. The workday passed pretty much the same as it always does - bugfixes and test runs, refactoring some code and rethinking a class architecture. Around noon I got a text from Michal - they were in Madrid, about to board the second flight. I saw it only twenty minutes later, and when I replied I saw the message wasn't being delivered. I was too late.
Walking back to the office after mincha (the afternoon prayer - there's a minyan at 1:15 in a nearby building), I remarked to another guy that my wife had just left me. He looked at me aghast for the few seconds I left him hanging until I added, "for two weeks." He didn't much appreciate the joke.
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| Noam's year-end party in kindergarten (he's second from the right in the back row). My mother stood in for Michal as the mother-in-attendance |
At 6:15 p.m. I arrived home, hot and sweaty from the ride home. I was greeted by two preschool aged children, playing and giggling, and two worn-out grandparents (they claimed it was the heat and humidity that did them in, not the children). After spoon-feeding Elisheva two bowls of rice (not an everyday occurrence), I took a shower and then promptly deposited the both of them into the bathtub. They were very pleased, and I let them soak and play for longer than I would, had there been more small children to attend to. I realized that the thinning out of the ranks allowed me to more calm, and take things at a slower pace without getting backlogged (Michal's spectre called out: "Those children need to be in bed already!", but I could ignore her so long as her pleas were not echoed by any children's woeful exhausted complaints).
Binyamin had gone back to his yeshiva in the morning, Chanania and Avigail are pretty much independent. At 8 p.m. I opened my laptop and started to write the blog post. Thus ends day 1.
I had intended to ask you if you had resumed riding as I would like to ride with you one day. Contrary to what you write, no one asked me if or why I was worn out, although perhaps the "if" was answered by my prone position on the couch and closed eyes. We will show you how to operate the machine, although I think Avigail may also know. Those older children claim that they do not know how to load the dishwasher; perhaps you should teach them that. Go to sleep if you are still awake.
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