4 In The House, 1 In The Dorm - Day 5

Day 5

Thursday morning.  The last day of the work week, and the first day of summer vacation for Avigail.  Therefore she was awarded the privilege of taking the kids to gan.  Since I had left my bike near work with a flat, I took the bus, intending to purchase a new inner tube (and possible tire) at a bike shop near where I switch buses.  After walking the two and a half blocks and picking out a tire, I discovered I had left my credit card at home and had no other means of payment.  I apologized to the bike store owner and dejectedly walked back to the bus, rode to the stop near where my bike was, and walked it to work (grateful that it hadn't been stolen over night).

When I got to work, I discovered a slack message from a coworker who is more of a bike enthusiast even than I am, offering me his spare inner tube that he keeps in his bag, free of charge.  The heavens were smiling down on me again.

At work the problems with the imagery preprocessing software bogging us done became intolerable, and we had a very intense yet brief meeting about it, which resulted in a resolution to run more comprehensive tests in order to better isolate the actual bug.  Research on the subpixel shift continued.  I started writing a test suite to ensure data integrity for the training data for our crop classification algorithm.

Every Thursday, the company buys us lunch (ordered from some local restaurant) and we all eat together, at one table (8-10 employees, depending on who's in town).  This Thursday, a random young woman ask to join us, before she realized we were an organic group.  She decided to stay on anyway, and as we told her about what we do, she realized she'd applied for a job at the company, over a year ago.  Small world.  She herself is a developer working remotely for Elasticsearch.

After work, I walked my bike back to the gas station, and waited for an inordinate amount of time for other patrons (mostly on two-wheeled vehicles) to finish using the air.  Then I was able to ride home, powering my wheels with my own two legs, just the way I like it.

Once I got home, getting the kids into bed went fairly routinely.  At night, I popped over to my parents' place, where I tried to help them figure out why the very recently purchased TV's speakers had stop producing sound.  I talked to Michal over Skype and tried to help her find a place to go for Shabbat, since in her parent's home there is no Shabbat observance, nor in their neighborhood.  She'd originally made up with her 6th grade teacher, with whom she never lost touch, but the discrepancy in the weekly Torah reading had caused a grave miscommunication.  Religious folk often find referring to weekends by their weekly reading more convenient and relatable than calendar dates.  Michal gave her the name of the Torah portion, meaning this weekend, but her host understood that she was referring to next weekend (see here for how this can happen). 

At first, she thought of going to Lakewood, NJ, where she has a few old friends who live a very large yeshiva-based community.  But there have been some recent cases of measles in Lakewood, and Moriah (age 2) has not been vaccinated for measles, so that option was out.  I messaged some friends via Facebook who live in the area, but in the end (this I found out on Friday afternoon) she found a host family through the brother of a friend from Ramat Gan (who grew up in New York).

As for our Shabbat plans, my mother and I planned out a scrumptious menu.

4 In The House, 1 In The Dorm - Day 4

Day 4

The morning went very smoothly.  I awoke (as usual) from the nudging of a child, this time Chanania, with my alarm still ringing next to me.  The time was 7:25.  By 8:29 I was at the gate of the gan with my two young ones.  

At work a great part of the day was spent dwelling on the shocking discovery, made by the head of the remote sensing team, that nearly two months of collective banging of heads against the wall over what seemed to be an elusive bug in the Gamma software we used to prepare the satellite imagery was in vain, and the bug was in fact in the python wrapper that our own algorithm developer had written.  Since there has been a lot of tension between him and other members of our team over the high-handed way he deals with everyone, there was a lot of poorly hidden smirking going on.  The CTO, needless to say, was not pleased by the whole thing, particularly by the lost time and wasted resources.  Later, I helped the only female member of our team, the web platform developer, with some SQL queries.  In between, I discussed how to curb server costs in light of the impending end of our year in the accelerator program (which involves them giving loads of free credits) on the Amazon Web Services platform.  On the way back from mincha I stopped to chat with a homeless man who has set up camp in an empty lot between my building and the one where the minyan  happens, surprising and impressing my buddy from the knee therapy company on the third floor who also comes to that minyan.  It wasn't a spontaneous act - I've been friendly with this particular homeless man for a couple of months.  His name is Aharon, and he came to Israel from Georgia (in Asia, not the US).  He's divorced, with a grown son in Bat Yam.  I give a few shekels now and then, and like to ask him how he's doing.  He never complains.

At 5:30 I left the office, only to discover that my bike had a flat tire.  I knew that if I took the bus my parents would be charged with the responsibility of putting the kids to bed, a fate I wished to spare them.  So I walked the bus to the nearest gas station, to check if the leak in the tire was small enough to allow me to get home (or at least to the next gas station).  But alas, no dice - the tire shrank within seconds of being inflated.  I lock up the bike, and opened my public transportation app.  I saw little dots on the map all around me, dockless electric scooters waiting to be ridden.  The first scooters of this genre arrived in Tel Aviv in the last year, and I had yet to take a ride on one.  Mostly I was hesitant to mount an electric vehicle with no helmet on, and if I had a helmet with me, that meant I was on my bike.  Now was the perfect opportunity.  I downloaded the Lime scooter app, walked a block to the nearest one, and started my ride.  I took a short detour in order to get used to the thing before riding it on the main ride.  From the start it was a disappointment.  The scooter didn't go as fast as I could on my bike, the brake was hard to use, the tiny wheels seemed to magnify every bump and crack in the road, and in general it wasn't as much fun as it looked.  I felt kind of silly, just standing there, cruising along in traffic, instead of actually making the vehicle move with my own body.  As I neared my neighborhood, half an hour later, it occurred to me there is something about the electric scooter experience that makes it feel like a video game.  Driving the thing requires very little effort, and unlike a car, you're not cut off from the action all around you.  The same web developer I helped with her database queries rides an electric scooter (which she owns, not a rental like mine) to work every day, and is a semi-serious gamer (as well as a mother of four).  It all made sense now.

This is a photo for illustrative purposes only, not an advertisement for Lime scooters

At home, the kids were calmly occupied by my mother.  I fed them a small meal (she reported that they'd had one and a half lunches at her place) and started moving them towards bed.  They get in a Skype call with their mother and siblings who are halfway around the world, and a book, before I hugged them goodnight.  Chanania, who had been at my parent's house, showed up around 8:30 and started telling me endless anecdotes about the play rehearsal they'd put on today in front of the 5th grade (he's in 6th), and about how some little kids in the school had trouble recognizing him when he was even partially in costume.  Finally, after 10 o'clock, he retreated to the roof to sleep, and I sat down to catch up on the blog.  20 minutes in, I hear footsteps outside.  Today was Avigail's last day of school (high schools finish earlier than elementary for some reason), and in the evening she had gymnastics practice.  She ceremoniously presented her report card to me.  I glanced at it, shocked at the predominance of the number 100 in the score column, then realized that my report cards didn't look much different when I was her age.  She did a few flips onto the mattress, just as a matter of habit, then put herself to bed.  I finished yesterday's blog post and kept on typing.

4 In The House, 1 In The Dorm - Day 3

Day 3

I awoke on an old mattress, in the living room, around 7 o'clock, children of all ages milling about, having their morning snacks and terrorizing one another.  It took me a few minutes to piece together where I was and what I was supposed to today.  Today is Tuesday.  Tuesday is my day off from work - the day I don't go into the office, usually spent running errands and trying to finish off old side projects that I still owe people.  The morning routine went smoothly, but the little ones weren't being super cooperative, so we only got out the door at 8:27.  Par for the course.

I made my way from the gan to a so-called minyan factory in nearby Bnei Brak, but much of the service I was peering and poking around the various rooms, hoping to recover a much-beloved siddur that is MIA as of last Friday.  I believe I went to morning minyan in that very place on Friday.  I had no luck with the siddur, and returned home slightly dejected.

The first thing I did at home was look at my phone to see if there were any urgent notifications.  I had a missed call and two Slack messages from my co-worker who had caused me frustration the other day.  He urgently needed my help sorting out a small mess he got himself into when trying to do a routine operation with git, the code versioning system we use.  I spent over an hour with him on the phone, connected remotely to his computer, alternately trying to calm him down, berating him for invoking git commands without understanding their full import, and encouraging him to invest real time in understanding the underlying assumptions and structure of the code versioning system.  In the end his code was restored in full, we had an actionable plan for preventing such blunders in the future, and he apologized for taking up so much of my time on my day off.

Then I spent another hour finishing off the blog post from the day before, and ending up wrestling with the iCloud Photos app for way too long while trying to transfer photos Avigail took at the party to my computer so I could feature them in the blog.  Binyamin called to say he had made himself an eye exam appointment for 1 pm, and would stop by the house beforehand.  I was glad that he was taking care of it, and sent a text to his class Rabbi to excuse him from school.  All of sudden, it was almost noon, and I had gotten zilch done so far.  Par for the course.

The afternoon was characterized by various members of the household going in and out of the house.  First it was Binyamin, who popped in before rushing out to make his appointment.  40 minute later he was back.  He volunteered to pick up the kids from gan, which they certainly found surprising.  After they settled in and began eating lunch, Chanania showed up, but left an hour or two later.  Avigail also came in at some point and then left shortly thereafter to attend a piano lesson and go see the middle school's end-of-the-year theater production.  

I was left attending to the two little ones throughout all of this, feeding them and goading them along to do whatever it is I thought they should be doing.  After they finished eating, which in itself took far longer than it ought to, since they couldn't stay seated between bites, I tried to just sit down at the computer and ignore them.  This strategy oftentimes works, as the children take out a game or make some other form of entertainment for themselves.  But today, perhaps due to the fact that their brackets - immediately younger and older siblings - being away, they wanted nothing more than to sit on my lap, or better yet, cling to my back or climb on my head.  This was not conducive to writing code or debugging UI glitches.  I tried offering them to go to the park, but there really wasn't anyone around to take them there.  Since Tuesday was officially my day off, and since my parents were on afternoon duty the rest of the week, I told them they weren't needed today, and they'd taken the opportunity to enjoy some of the touristy parts of Tel Aviv.  So I couldn't invoke them for help, either.  In the end, I took the kids to the park myself.  

When we got to the park, the kids disparagingly remarked that there was nobody to play with, by which they meant they didn't have any friends there (at least a dozen kids were playing on the playground equipment).  After trying to convince them to play with each other for a few minutes, I gave up and invited them to the nearby outdoor gym.  There I invented fun challenges for them, using each other as weights (I had to help Elisheva lift Noam).  As soon as we had made the rounds on all the machines, Binyamin showed up.  He was heading back to yeshiva, and had just come to say goodbye before leaving.  I gave him a hug and bid him well.  We'd been in the park for only about half an hour, but I was running out of ideas and the kids were already losing interest, so I decided to head back home.

Avigail was home, briefly, which provided a distraction for Elisheva while I gave Noam a long overdue haircut.  After that I leisurely fed the kids and eased them into bed.  Chanania was anxious to gather props for a school play he was participating in, and since I had just received a text from my parents saying they were back from their outing, I sent him over there to try to nab a pair of extra reading glasses from his grandfather (he had been cast as an old man in the play).  After he left, a woman called saying she could send a pair of glasses without lenses with her son to school in the morning (apparently Michal had sent a note on the community WhatsApp group for women requesting help with the props).

I took care of a few more things around the house, and then planned to go over to my parents myself.  Just before I left the house, I got a Skype call from Amiel.  I told him I'd call him back from the other apartment.  When I arrived there, I found Chanania and my father on the patio, constructing a bamboo cane to embellish the character.  I told them that the reading glasses were no longer needed, and then went off to find some of my mom's scrumptious cookies.  The cookies were residing in a brand new glass cookie jar, which had been inaugurated only the day before.  I grabbed the lid to open it, but the jar came with it.  Before I had a chance to put it down, the lid released its hold and the jar shattered on the countertop.  I felt terrible, and promptly cleaned up all the broken glass, carefully brushing off each cookie from shards before setting it aside.  They were delicious, indeed.

I then placed the cookies in a plastic hummus container.  Later, when I was leaving, I searched everywhere and couldn't find the container with the cookies.  Finally I looked back in the cupboard with the empty containers, and there it was - I'd replaced the container to its original place, after filling it up.  My dad remarked that I seem to be short on sleep.  I laughed and said, "You have no idea!"

I returned the Skype call.  Amiel (and his mother) needed help tuning the violin.  Again.  After making some general suggestion which were not well received by the people on the end with the violin, Amiel concluded that they just need to follow through with the plan I voiced before they'd left - to bring it to any music store and ask someone there to do them the favor of tuning it. 

Amiel with his pesky violin

The call didn't last very long, and I opened my computer and began to work on a project from last year that isn't quite finished yet, working on adding glowing arrows to the app in order to hint to users to move an animated smile with their finger.  Chanania went home, and us adults were having a screen party -

I was on my laptop, my mom on her iPad and my dad on his laptop.  The room was silent, but for the clicking of the keys on the keyboard.  Around midnight I finished the glowing arrows and said goodnight to my folks. 

Back home, I was very sleepy, but after brushing my teeth I perked up a bit, and felt the need to stick to my guns and send off the blog post.  I sat down, added two paragraphs to what I'd started in the morning, and succumbed to my exhaustion.

4 In The House, 1 In The Dorm - Day 2

Epilogue to Day 1

Last night, in the afterhours, I did a few chores around the house - baked the bread dough that Avigail and the bread machine had prepared, loaded the dishwasher.  And then, intimidated by the empty bed that awaited me, zoned out to Youtube videos for about an hour before actually climbing into bed.  I set my alarm for 6:40 just like the day before.

Day 2

I was awoken in the morning by Elisheva, who was standing by my bed and asking me to help her to get ready so she go early to gan.  I glanced at my phone, which was still ringing from the alarm I'd set.  It read 7:13.  The gan opens its gates at 7:30, so I figured by the time I get up and get both kids ready, we'll be able to leave the house right away. 

This morning, the kids demonstrated just how responsible they can when there is no one looking over their shoulder, nagging them to get things done.  Chanania asked me if today is the right day to feed Amiel's fish, over which he'd been placed in charge of in Amiel's absence.  Elisheva, excited about her year-end party in gan (yesterday Noam's gan had their party), dressed herself in a holiday outfit.  Afterwards, Avigail reminded her that the party is not now, but in the afternoon, so she wear regular clothes, and Elisheva changed again.  Avigail, who had been selected by Elisheva to be her parent figure at the party, asked me which phone she can use to take pictures at the party, since her phone has a real crappy camera on it.  

At a quarter to eight I left the house with the two preschoolers, by which time the two older children had already gotten themselves ready and left for their respective schools.  After I dropped them off in gan (today I was allowed to accompany them into the building, since we were early), I continued another two blocks down the street to find a minyan that started at 8 o'clock, which was exactly the time I arrived there.  

I returned home after minyan was over and decided to commit the first half of this blog post to audio, as a means of quickly jotting down my thoughts, before leaving for work.  I packed my bag, mounted my bike, and left for work.  At work, just before lunch, I got frustrated with my only other team member for not wanting to put in the effort to properly learn methodologies for working with componentized code packages in a development environment.  Over lunch we kind of made up.  At the end of the day we encountered a confounding issue wherein our processed data suffered from a sub-pixel shift in comparison to the original satellite imagery.  Just before going home I made a minor breakthrough when I discovered that they seem to have different approaches to applying geographic coordinates to each pixel - one relates to the center of the pixel, while the other draws the pixel with its top left corner anchored at the coordinate.  Filling in for Michal, I reminded Binyamin to make an optometrist appointment so he doesn't get in trouble when he shows up for his first interview at the draft office in two weeks.

I rode home and arrived at 6 o'clock sharp.  The house was devoid of life, the windows all closed and shuttered.  It seemed like nobody had been home since I left the house in the morning.  I sat down and relaxed after peeling off a layer of clothing, then notified my parents that I was home.  They said they'd send Noam home on his own.  Elisheva was still at the party in gan with Avigail.  They all arrived a few minutes later, pretty much at the same time.  Elisheva showed me the special siddur (prayerbook) she'd received in gan, and the fancy hair styling that Avigail had made her for the party.  

The party in gan.  Elisheva is wearing a pink dress

 It was 6:30, and I slowly, quietly, began to encourage them to come shower so they could put on pajamas and get into bed, aiming to be done with the whole process around 7:30.  Noam asked if we could play on the tumbling mat a game he dubbed chalukat hechalal, which is a nonsense combination literally meaning "the divvying up of outer space".  In the game, the kids bounce on the mat (which is actually just an old spring mattress) and I pull their feet from underneath them, flip them over onto the mat, and other assorted Abba-assisted stunts.  Don't ask me how he came up with that name - he has a knack for labeling even mundane objects with bizarre names.  For instance, there was a stretch when he called the little slide in our living room "The Luberman".  Funny kid. 

The Luberman

I told him we could play, but only after they're both ready for bed.  20 minutes later he still hadn't come to the shower, spending most of that time lolling upside down on the back of the couch.  Then he remembered he was hungry.  After some haggling over what he could eat, I offered him toast with guacamole (prepared by my mother for last Shabbat), and his eyes lit up.  In the meanwhile, Elisheva was refusing to take off the outfit she wore to the party, and not only that, but she was refusing to answer any questions about moving towards bed.

Thus we continued on until I realized that I need to leave the house.  Usually I would catch a minyan for mincha, the afternoon prayer, at an office building near mine, at 1:15.  Today I was unable to attend, so now, at 7: 35, was my last chance at mincha.  I asked Avigail to continue the going to bed process with them, and skedaddled.

I returned to the house at 8 o'clock.  Much progress had been made.  Elisheva was in pajamas, and Noam had finished eating.  I brushed his teeth and deposited them in their beds.  Elisheva, still being terse, wanted to be covered with a sheet, or maybe not actually, but then again... I gave up trying to interpret her murmurs and left her calling after me as I left their bedroom.  I sat down at my computer to try to get some things done, and the phone rang.  It was a Skype call from the missing family members.

After some small talk, we got down to business.  Amiel, who has playing violin for less than a year, has a recital in three weeks.  In order to continue practicing he brought the violin with him on the trip, but when flying with string instruments, it's recommended to loosen the strings, lest the pressure differences cause damage to them or the instrument body.  Now he, and his mother, were having a lot of trouble tuning the darned thing.  I was reminded of Humpty-Dumpty (who, BTW, was actually the name of a cannon that the rebels knocked off the castle walls in an uprising against the monarchy in England, sometime in the 13th or 14th century).

For the better part of an hour Michal, I, and the tuning app she had on her phone all worked together to try to tune the violin.  The problem was, even when a string would sound right, since her fingers weren't accustomed to applying the kind of force needed to keep the pegs stuck firmly in place, by the time she tuned the rest of the them the first one would go flaccid again.  In the end we said "good enough for a 9 year old who can barely squeak out a tune".

A while later she called back again, after even the older kids were in bed.  This time Moriah (age 2y) was up from her nap, smiling and giggling, but sad that she hadn't yet seen a single squirrel (while she was asleep they went for a walk and saw a bunch, but when they took her out for a stroll all the squirrels were apparently hiding - or napping themselves).  We talked and updated each other on things.  Michal had to struggle to keep the kids from succumbing to the jetlag and sleeping in the middle of the day.  We hung up shortly after midnight.

I retreated to the tumbling mat with a game on my mobile phone, planning to play for a little while and then go to bed.  Instead, I ended up falling asleep right there.  I set no alarm.  I didn't even brush my teeth.

Single Parent, Reloaded

Last night Michal left for the States to visit her parents, with two small children accompanying her on her journey.  Once more I am father-of-five, although this time for just over two weeks.  And this time I have backup from day one, in the form of my dedicated parents.  And just as I realized I was in the same situation as I was upon the inception of this blog, almost exactly four years ago, the itch to blog through single parenthood returned.

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.

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.

Coming to America: The First Shabbat

Conflict of Interests

At home in Ramat Gan, we have a very clear, set schedule for Friday night.  During the summer, we start Shabbat early (what's call Plag HaMincha) so that the younger children can participate in the meal and still go to bed at a reasonable hour.  Being away from home, we had to strategize with conflicting interests.  On the one hand, we wanted to have a pleasant and calm Shabbat dinner with the whole extended family.  On the other hand, we wanted to attend synagogue, which only started at 7:30 pm.  Normally, the meal is eaten only after services.  And on the third hand, the earliest Shabbat can be started is one and a quarter hours before sundown, which came out to be 6:30 pm.  In order for the meal to count as one of the three Shabbat feasts, it needs to be held on Shabbat.

In the end our plan was to do the afternoon prayers at home, earlier, so that we could aim to get to synagogue for just Kabbalat Shabbat, which I estimated to start close to 8 o'clock.  That way, we could start Shabbat at the earliest possible time and have a leisurely meal before leaving the house at 7:40.  What actually happened was that we didn't finish preparing the meal until after 7 o'clock, then we ate a somewhat abbreviated meal and left the house to run to synagogue (just Binyamin and I) at 8:04.  We arrived just in time for Adon Olam, the hymn said at the conclusion of the Friday night prayers.  Oh well.  Better luck next time.

Feast of Goodness

For Shabbat lunch, which, due to our insistence that children have relatively standard bedtimes even on weekends, is the only opportunity for us to go out for a Shabbat meal, we had been hooked up with a family that has a kind of open house every Shabbat.  The mother of a former college roommate of Michal's, who lives in the area, had suggested we take advantage of their hospitality, since they're always happy to have more people join them.  She suggested we meet around noon at the synagogue, since guests usually head to their house in a group, using the synagogue as a departure point.  Shabbat morning was overcast, and by 11 am it was raining fairly hard.  At 11:40, when it was time for us to leave, it was basically pouring.  We borrowed raincoats from Sonya and Adam (umbrellas are prohibited on Shabbat), put a nylon cover on the stroller, and started to make our way in the rain.

We made it to the synagogue in good spirits but quite wet, only to hear from our host that the group wasn't leaving until 12:45.  So we nibbled on cookies and vegetables at the kiddush that was still going on, and chatted a little with some of the members of the community who recognized us as out-of-towners.  By the time 12:45 rolled around, the rain had completely stopped.  We threw all the wet rain gear over the top of the stroller and joined the lunch party for a 20 minute stroll.  Eventually we reached a stone house with a piece of paper taped to the front door.  It read, in Hebrew, "Cohen family - Welcome!"

Inside we were warmly greeted by our hosts, an elderly couple who were impeccably dressed and overly welcoming.  As everyone filed in and got comfortable, the kids were invited to play with magnet sets and scoot around the floor on little kiddie vehicles they referred to as "flying turtles".  Within a few minutes we were called to table for kiddush.  The table was very long, and set with very stylish, almost lavish, dishes and decor.  Everyone, even the youngest children, had a tall crystal glass to drink from.  Bottles of flavored soda were distributed equally down the table.  A towering centerpiece with large flowers was set in the center of the table, but somehow was slender enough not to block our view of anyone else.  Booster seats and high chairs were available for all our children.  Even though five other guests had come with us (for a total of 16 people at the table), in the end there were two extra place settings.  I was mesmerized.  What was this place?

The host pronounced the blessings with a thick Brooklyn accent, grape juice was drunk, hands washed, and bread broken.  The meal was underway.  The hosts were exceedingly courteous and gracious.  While a constant barrage of chicken and deli meats flowed from the kitchen, along with kugel, cholent, salad, and other dishes, the hosts inquired after each of the guests.  Henry, the host (I don't recall his wife's name), would casually toss out a dvar torah from time to time, and he also invited one of the guests (our guide, as it turned out) to deliver some of her own insights on the Torah reading.  She chose to speak about the mitzva of caring for the stranger, the sojourner, and the greater social meaning of the commandment.  When she finished, I commented that we have before us, in this house, a fantastic application of that very commandment, since our hosts extend an open invitation to any who need it.  About midway through my second sentence, Henry and his wife abruptly left the dining room for the safety of the kitchen.  I was left with my mouth slightly agape, the unfinished thought still on my lips, whilst the other guests looked on, seeming slightly amused at what had happened.  A few moments later, our hosts reemerged.  Before taking his seat, Henry asked me if I'd finished with what I had to say.  I almost began to repeat myself from the beginning, but then immediately understand what had transpired, and just said yes, I'm done.  Then Henry proceeded to explain that they don't appreciate hearing praise about what they do, because they don't feel like it's anything extraordinary.  "We're all sojourners," he told me, "me just the same as you.  That's just a part of being Jewish."  I tried to protest and insist that Jews are no longer strangers, no longer the homeless people.  We can go home now, to Israel.  My words fell on deaf ears.  I can't say I was surprised.

By the time we'd finished eating - for dessert they brought out two flavors of pareve ice cream and four kinds of cookies, and the kids had played sufficient on the (still wet) backyard playground, many hours had passed.  Throughout the whole encounter, I had been completely astounded by the couple's patience, generosity, humility, and piety.  When we decided it was time to go, Amiel and Chanania came to the back door from the play equipment with thoroughly muddy feet.  I caught them just as they were about to step in, and ordered them to go around and come in the front entrance, so that they could wipe their feet on the mat.  Henry overheard and waved his hand dismissively, saying, "It's fine, I don't mind.  Let them come in."  I was totally blown away, but I still insisted they go around to the front.  Leaving their house, I was reminded of many a chasidic tale, in which one of the characters is a pious, generous, rich man.  Perhaps there are still some of those left in the world.

Birds of a Feather

We returned to the house and passed the remainder of Shabbat napping (the adults) and playing board games with the cousins (the kids).  Binyamin and I returned to synagogue after 7 pm for the prayers at the conclusion of Shabbat. 

In many Orthodox synagogues, a small meal is served at the end of Shabbat for those who come for the afternoon prayers and stay for the evening service as well.  This synagogue was no different from most.  We entered the social hall and I looked for a table to join.  At most tables people had already filled there plates from the buffet and were engaged in conversation with the people seated next to them.  I looked for a table that wasn't crowded and seemed to have friendly folk.  I chose one near the entrance, where two fathers and two sons were situated.  Within moments, it became apparent that I had "accidentally" chosen to sit at the only table occupied by other Israelis.  I guess I subconsciously identified them and was drawn to my kind.  The both of them were in the area temporarily, one had been sent by his work and the other in order for his wife to get a higher degree.  I didn't have much to talk to them about, but it was nice to hear and speak Hebrew to adults.

Coming to America - Days 3-4: Vacation Routine

During the next couple days we started to settle in to a kind of routine, which mostly revolved around feeding and entertaining the children (duh - what did you really expect?).  In parallel to sharing those responsibilities, each one of the adults felt into their familiar roles.  I found time to work, the non-working and grandmother managed the kitchen, and the handyman grandfather found things to fix around the house.

Kitchen consultation

Dedushka (Leo) fixing the screen door

American Jewry*

Part of my regular routine is going to synagogue multiple times a day.  I began making trips to the local synagogue in the morning and at the end of the day, which is about a 15 minute walk from the house.  The synagogue is a run-of-the-mill mainstream Orthodox establishment, not particularly Zionist but not anti-Zionist in any regard.  From my first visit I felt extremely sad, nearly moved to tears, by the superficial way in which they related to their faith.  In our home community, Judaism is not related to as merely a religious practice, a communal framework, or a code of belief.  It is seen as a driving force behind personal, political, and even world change.

There is a well-known statement in the Talmud regarding the state of the Jewish people after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem: "Since the destruction of the Temple, all the Holy One has left in the world is 4 handbreadths of halacha."  The 4 handbreadths refer to, essential, a person's personal space as conceptualized by the Jewish code of law, and is equivalent to 1.9 meters.  This maxim is usually understood to mean that after the destruction of the Temple, the only part of Judaism that is still relevant, is still feasible for practical purposes, is the code of personal conduct.  Nowadays, there's a saying, "He's a man of the Shulchan Aruch," meaning that a person's focus is on properly observing all the personal halachot, as delineated in the Shulchan Aruch, a definitive 16th century work that became the basis for all further halachic discussions since.  Most people read the statement regarding the place of halacha as an imperative: since this is all we have left, this is a very important thing, and should be the sole focus of your religious devotion.  I recently came up with a very different reading, which makes much more sense to me - it's an outcry: this is all that people do anymore, and it's a travesty!  It's a travesty that the vast and powerful effect the Jewish faith once had on the entirety of personal, communal, municipal, and national circles of influence has been reduced to a mere set of prosaic directives for how to tie your shoes and which side to sleep on.

*This section contains my reflections of American mainstream rabbinical Orthodox Judaism, and its failure to fulfill its purported yearning for spirituality and the redemption of the world.  Since my criticisms are essentially just a decrying of the hypocrisy of this group, non-orthodox Jews who do not necessarily subscribe to a belief system that frames the Land of Israel as the only true home of the Jewish people and the only land in which the complete Jewish life can be attained should not see these particular comments as pertinent to them.  Not that they're without blemish, but at least they aren't a bunch of hypocrites...

Strengthening Bonds

The following days saw a general closeness between cousins develop and blossom.  They slowly turned into a single teeming mass of youthful impulses and energies, sharing equally breakfast, bedrooms, board games, Babushka, and bedtime stories.  The two notable exceptions were a) in upsetting situations the child would still seek consolation from a birth parent, and b) Arik was not in on the whole experience, since he was not home most of the day.  In addition, our children's abilities in spoken English (the main language spoken by their cousins) gradually improved, which greatly facilitated the whole process.

Avigail and Maya starting to hit it off

Dinnertime shenanigans

So Many Ducklings

Dear reader: if you're not familiar with the classic children's book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, please go find a copy and read it before continuing on.

On the fourth day of our trip, I decided the take all the children in the house (6 of ours + Maya and Layla - Arik was at opera camp, and Binyamin hadn't arrived yet) to reenact the story of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their ducklings who come to Boston and make their home in the Boston Public Garden.  All the children were familiar with the story and very excited to go and see it first hand.  So first we take the tram down Beacon Street, retracing their waddling footsteps, then entered the Public Garden, observed the ducks and geese present their, took pictures with the swan boats, and then went to visit the bronze monument to the ducklings.  We were very surprised to learn that everything depicted in the book, written over 77 years ago, is just the same as it was then, except for one small detail - you no longer may ride bicycles in the park.

Dreamy Elisheva on the tram

Rereading the story, in the very place it happened

We really went out on a limb for this picture

The swan boats

The ducklings 

Layla, Amiel and Chanania hitch a ride on Mrs. Mallard's back

After we finished our duckling tour, we went to a nice little park along the river.

When it was time to head home, we walked back to the tram, but we discovered that boarding a train was futile.  We were downtown, and trying to travel in the direction of Fenway Stadium, on the day of a Red Sox game, in the middle of rush hour.  We didn't have a chance.  So we rode a different train line that run along with hours for as far as we could - one stop.  Then we started walking.  We walked for about an hour, during which time I was constantly scanning behind me for Noam, who was lagging, and peering ahead to make sure I didn't lose sight of Maya and Avigail, who were leading the pack.  When we all gathered at intersections, waiting for the light to change, people gaped.  On at least four different occasions over the course of the day, stupefied passersby asked me in awe and wonderment if all those children belong to me.  I usually downplayed it, saying no, some of them are my nieces, but later I realized that I should have just said "I have another five back at home."  I felt like I was reliving another page of that book, where Mrs. Mallard walks with her ducklings from the river to the park, and people on the street stop in wonderment.  Here I was, marching down the street with eight ducklings!  Eventually we passed Fenway Stadium and made it to a tram station where the cars were no longer crowded. 

Coming to America - Day 2: Diversity or Culture Clash?

Crossing the Atlantic obviously brings with it numerous cultural implications, beyond any possible linguistic barriers.  I've lived half my life in Israel, and although I don't feel like a total foreigner in the US, there is no way for me to prevent myself from constantly noticing the differences and contemplating their meaning.  Much more so for my children.  On our first day, those cultural differences played out in many different ways.

Rise & Shine

After getting up in the morning, we began to get our bearings.  We are being graciously hosted by my sister- and brother-in-law, Sonya and Adam.  They moved near Boston, MA exactly one year ago from central Pennsylvania.  The neighborhood they live in is situated around along the slopes of an enormous hill.  The live on a terrace (that is, the official street name is such-and-such Terrace), which, is its name implies, wraps around the side of the hill.  This was actually the first time I was fully aware of the significance of this specific street classification (lane, boulevard, etc. all denote different geographical/municipal phenomena).  The most poignant ramification of living on the side of a hill is that one side of the house is always going to have a very different relationship to the ground than the other side.  In their case, the front of the house is at street level, and the back is on stilts.  They have a multi-tiered deck that conforms roughly to the slope of the hill, and then there is a nearly useless patch of land between the end of the deck and the next house downhill.  Nearly useless due to the steep incline, of course.  It is, oddly enough, put to use by wild turkeys who come to roost in the evening in the branches of the trees that grow in that otherwise unutilized stretch.

Staying in the house with us are Michal and Sonya's parents, Anna and Leo.  They live outside of Philadelphia, and drove in to Boston to enjoy a rare few days of having all their progeny under one roof.  The dynamics between the various generations began to unfold over the course of the morning.  Anna, being a veteran Jewish mother, feels the full responsibility of feeding everyone in the house, even though they all have their own Jewish mothers to take care of them (or at least Jewish wives).  We are on vacation, but Sonya and Adam are not.  They are university professors, and have responsibilities even over the summer.  Our children are on vacation, as well.  Sonya and Adam's children - Maya (12), Arik (9), and Layla (7) are likewise on summer vacation, but Arik has a drama day camp that occupies him most of the day.

The grandparents speak Russian to everyone in the house, with the exclusion of myself.  I took a year of Russian at the University of Chicago, and then have lived in a house where Russian is spoken around me for the past 15.5 years (since Binyamin was born), but my skills are still quite limited.  Adam, who grew up in Montreal, has been very studious and tenuous in his pursuit of Russian fluency, and it has certainly paid off.  The Boston kids speak to each other alternately in Russian or English; their English seems to be the stronger tongue.  Our kids will understand either Russian or English, but only the older ones are proficient in answering in any language other than Hebrew.  And so on our first morning the regular routines of getting up and eating breakfast were governed in a mostly separate fashion, each nuclear family doing its own thing within the common confines of the house.

Lost & Found

In the late morning, our kids were getting bored and antsy, having been shown around the house and deck by their cousins and quickly exhausted the obvious means of entertainment offered to them.  So I volunteered to take them to the neighborhood park.  I set off to climb to the top of the hill with Elisheva, Noam, Amiel, and Chanania.  After walking up a steep incline for about ten minutes, we crested the hill, and there we found a park split over both sides of the road, with lots of sloping grassy areas and not very much in the way of a playground.

Tree climbing on the top of the hill

Noam and Elisheva trying out a cozy cabin

A man-made stone structure in the park

After exploring the park, we decided to go down the hill to the street on the slope opposite us.  Amiel did cartwheels all the way down to the bottom (after which he was unable to walk straight), while Noam and Chanania just ran.  Elisheva and I took our time, and went over to investigate a couple of lone trees near the edge of the grass.  There we found large flat rock with two bracelets of green polished stones laying on it.  Elisheva immediately requested to adorn them, one on each wrist (she is very much enamored of wearing jewelry).  The boys came over to see what we were doing.  After hearing that the bracelets had just been lying there, Amiel shouted out, "Let's do the mitzva of Hashavat Aveida!".  Hashavat Aveida is the mitzva of returning lost objects (or livestock) you happen upon.  Nowadays the most common approach to finding the owner of the lost object is simply by putting up a note in the place the object was found.  The note must not stipulate too much information about the object, in order to fraudulent claims.  The finder must leave out identifying traits from the note, and only return it to a claimant who correctly supplies them.  Local electronic bulletin boards (like a neighborhood Google Group, or the like) are also a good place to advertise notices of found items.  We did not come to the park with paper and pen, and I have no knowledge of local virtual community boards, so I just smiled at Amiel's good intentions.  Maybe we'll put up a note next time we go to the park.

Elisheva modeling one of the bracelets

On the way home, I decided to go a different way, not the way we'd come.  My phone had no reception since I hadn't yet purchased an American SIM card, and I had no prior knowledge of the neighborhood.  And so, I knowingly let myself and four of my children get completely lost in suburban Boston.  We were supposed to be home in about half an hour from the time we left the park, but I didn't let that bother me.  As we wandered the streets, I pointed out the children how different states put out different-looking license plates, we pondered together the different kinds of houses, and noted how the school buses, mail trucks, and other mundane features of urban life look very different here than in Israel.  We found mushrooms under a tree and harvested them to bring back to Babushka (Russian for grandmother).  We found a wild turkey feather on the parkway.  Eventually, we had only ten minutes to be home, and the children were starting to seriously drag their feet and even whine a little that they were tired and thirsty.  I had to do something.  I've always prided myself on a solid sense of direction.  The streets we had been walking down were anything but straight, and yet I had a strong feeling that were headed the right way.  Then we chanced upon a set of stairs that connected to the terrace above us.  We ascended, and continued to walk along the higher street.  At this point, I decided that enough was enough, and that I would ask directions from the next person we passed on the street.  Just then, I pointed out to the kids a license plate from Pennsylvania.  I took three more steps, looked up, and stopped.  The house on the opposite side of the street seemed oddly familiar.  Oh yeah, that's the house I see when I walk out the door of Sonya and Adam's house... I called out to the kids: "Ok, we're here, come inside!"  We had walked just past the house without even realizing it.  But we found our way home, on our own, and we were only 5 minutes late.

Later in the day, we attempted to get lost again, but with less success.  It happened to be Anna's birthday, and a surprise talent show was in the works.  Almost all the kids and some of their parents would be performing in her honor.  I was charged with purveying the dessert - either ice cream or a fancy cake.  I set out in search of a kosher supermarket I'd told was "just around the corner" but not told precisely which corner it was around, and the source of the information was unavailable at the time.  I left the house with Moriah (in a stroller), Elisheva, Noam, and Layla, with an hour to return. We headed down the main drag, where I'd seen a kosher restaurant, and continued on for some time.  When it was almost time to turn back, I decided we should go a different way back to the house in order to increase our chances of finding the store.  I started down a side street, and immediately Layla started disclosing the way home from our new route.  I turned onto an even smaller street, and again the same thing.  It was as if I had a living version of Waze walking along beside me, recalculating my route at every turn.  So I engaged her in a conversation about the value of getting lost, and told her the story of how we had succeeded in getting lost and then found earlier in the day.  In the meantime, we found ourselves at a dead end, and cut through an oddly unfenced construction site (no construction was underway at that time of day) in order to get through to the next street.  When we got back to a main avenue, we had only 20 minutes left to get home.  I saw a large complex with 6-pointed stars on it.  We walked past it, to find a Jewish bookstore.  I felt like we were getting warmer.  I was about to give up, when a religious couple walked out of the bookstore.  I asked them as to the whereabouts of a kosher supermarket, and they said, "Follow us.  We're going there - it's just on the next block."  Eureka!  Again we had arrived at our destination by trying to get lost.  Now we just had to get the ice cream, and get home.  With fifteen minutes left on the clock, we entered the store, Elisheva screaming for no known reason.  I figured out that she would calm down if I let her sit in the stroller.  I picked up Moriah and went off to hunt for ice cream.  It took me a few minutes to pick out a bucket of cold dessert, and when I got back to the stroller, I found an unconscious little girl inside.  That certainly explained the screaming earlier.  The line was a bit long, so we were fifteen minutes late getting back, but I felt victorious.  Getting lost had proved itself yet again.

Birthday Revue

When we got back to the house, it was time for the birthday programming.  Babushka Anna was requested to come to the room where the electric organ is kept, and everyone began to sing birthday songs, and then dance around her in a circle.  She was overjoyed at the attention and at having so many of her children and grandchildren present.  Then everyone sat down and the show commenced.  Maya MC'ed, birthday cards were presented, short music pieces were performed on the electric piano and clarinet, and then we all sat down on the deck for a festive family meal.

The audience is ready

Babushka in the middle

Avigail

Maya

Chanania

Amiel

The long table

The other side of the table

Toasts were made, food was consumed, (mosquitos were swatted) and good vibes were shared by all.

The Cousin Connection

[This section was accidentally deleted by some child who banged on the keyboard while I was away.  By the time I realized what had happened, I had typed too many other words to be able to undelete it.  So instead I'll just summarize.]

This was the first time these cousins really met each other, in the flesh.  Noam and Layla hit it off phenomenally, despite a one-way language barrier (Noam has a lot of trouble articulating in any language other than Hebrew).  So much so I was reminded of the beginning of Forrest Gump, where he describes his relationship with Jenny when they were little kids, "like peas and carrots."  No other significant cross-family connections were made between the kids.

It May Be Organic, but is it Kosher?

Michal and I are the only members of our respective birth families that keep kosher in a strict fashion.  Keeping kosher in someone else's non-kosher compliant home is always tricky, and we don't have a set protocol for it, since it happens so infrequently.  It becomes ever the more complicated when the host family have their own particularities around food, and yet again when their is another set of guests with their own culinary preferences.  But Sonya and Adam are open-minded and inclusive folk, so the approach they preferred was a "common denominator" approach, to the greatest extent possible - when we're all eating together, we all eat the same food.  That means the food has to be kosher (for us), organic as much as possible (for the hosts [but not only - we also like to eat organic]), and also adhere to the traditional Russian palate (for the grandparents).

Inclusion is also a good approach, but problems still arise when there is a conflict of values.  Sonya wanted to put spinach leaves in the salad.  Spinach is known to have a high probability of infestation by insects, and all insects (with the exception of 6 varieties of locust) are strictly prohibited in the kosher diet.  The accepted treatment is to soak the leaves in a soapy solution for a few minutes (which dissolves the adhesive that sticks the insects to the leaves), and then thoroughly rinse.  Sonya and Adam's dietary restrictions include avoiding ingesting chemicals in any amount, and naturally Sonya was concerned about trace amounts of soap that might not be fully rinsed away.  Even though I am also a fan of spinach, I was willing to leave it out all together.  Thinking about it at the time, I realized it was just a question of priorities: neither one of us was interested in eating soap, or insects, but I was willing to risk small amounts of soap in order to completely avoid the insects, and she was willing to risk eating a few bugs in order to avoid the soap suds.  In the end, she was more resourceful than I, and proposed checking some of the leaves manually, just enough to fill out the salad.  That was a solution I never would have proposed, since it is tedious work and usually people aren't interested in undertaking it.  At the end of the day, inclusion won out, and the salad was sumptuous.

Coming to America - Day 1: The long shlep

Prologue

We live in Israel.  Our parents and some of our siblings live in the USA.  My parents come visit us on a very regular basis.  Michal's parents less so, but they are still a known presence in our children's lives (the infrequent IRL visits being supplemented by Skype sessions).  We travel to the States very, very infrequently.  The last time I was there was nine years ago, for my brother Ari's wedding.  Since then, Michal visited her mother with Elisheva, who was a baby, four years ago, and last summer we sent Chanania and Avigail for a few weeks to both sets of grandparents.  

A few months ago, an idea began to form to have a large-scale family get-together in Woodstock, where I did most of my growing up and where my parents still live (at least some of the time).  The basis for the family reunion was my mother's impending 70th birthday.  The idea quickly turned into an actionable plan.  Dates were chosen, plane tickets purchased, and we (actually just the kids) began counting the weeks and days until the day of departure.  Like the last trip we made, nine years prior, we planned to split our time stateside between Michal's family and mine roughly one third and two thirds.  Nine years ago, we had only three kids (and one in utero).  This year, we have seven.  This is an entirely different ballgame.

Leaving Home and Country

We carefully chose our flights.  We didn't want a flight that left too early in the morning, so that we could have a calm start to the long day that lay ahead of us.  A night flight was not optimal either, since that meant the kids (and their parents, as well) would have to try to get their entire night's sleep pent up in the airplane seats - that obviously wasn't going to end well.  In the end, we found a flight that left at a quarter to noon.  That way, we only needed to leave the house by 8:30, while on the other end of things it gave us many hours of flight time before the kids started to go into insanely tired mode.

We ordered two taxis to take us to the airport.  We were traveling light - four suitcases and a stroller, plus a slew of carry-ons and smaller items.  Binyamin was not traveling with us, since he functions as a counselor in the Ariel youth movement, and their camp is the week we traveled.  He is scheduled to fly on his own the following Thursday.  And so, the eight of us and all our luggage fit perfectly into two taxis.  We got to the airport and got in line for check-in.  After about an hour of waiting, we finally made it to the desk.  Check-in took an inordinate amount of time, even for a party of eight.  And the first sign of trouble appeared: our kosher meals had not been registered.  We hoped that the regular airplane meals, since they were sourced from an Israeli supplier, would be kosher anyway.

Before security we stopped to eat some sandwiches, and suddenly it was ten minutes before boarding time, and we were on the wrong side of security.  This was the first time we realized that taking six kids on the plane is not just more expensive and a greater load on your parental attention drive, it also takes a lot longer to do everything.  We made it to the gate 15 minutes before takeoff.  There were still a handful of passengers who hadn't boarded yet, so I let a friendly salesman convince me to sign up for a credit card that would give me frequent flyer miles.  I was the last person to board the plane.

On the plane, we had seven seats all in one row (Moriah didn't get a seat, since she's not two years old yet).  The plane had three sections with three seats in each.  We had the entire left and middle sections of our row, and the aisle seat of the right section.  Initially we sat, from left to right: Elisheva, Avigail, Chanania, Noam, Amiel, Michal, and me isolated in the lone aisle seat.  The logic was that Avigail (13) could take care of Elisheva (3), Chanania (11) doesn't need a parental figure next to him, and Michal would be in arm's reach of the two boys next to her.  An aisle seat with no children next to me?  I wasn't going to complain!  Of course, Moriah (1.5) would be on my lap some of the time, but I didn't have sole responsibility for her.

We left the ground almost an hour late, but the captain assured us that the flight had been originally scheduled with a 25 minute buffer (we ended up landing 5 minutes after the original arrival time).  The children were all calm and excited.  We had plenty of things to help them pass the hours: coloring books, card games, novels, what have you.  What we didn't take into account was that the multimedia devices installed in the seat backs would be a much effective and powerful means to that end.  At first, Elisheva was intensely involved with her coloring book while everyone else, myself and Moriah excepted, were absorbed in there screens.  Then Elisheva got hooked, too.

Mass hypnotism

Insomnia at 30,000 feet

I had one primary focus that preempted any interest in watching a film on the flight: sleep.  The prior two nights I had been suffering from a cold that alternately made my nose completely stuffed, or streamed very thin mucus out my nostrils.  Both nights it took my hours to final fall asleep.  The night before the flight I had only succeeded in sleeping about three hours, propped up on the couch so my head was almost upright.  After all were settled and fed, Michal granted me a release from all filial duties in order to try to sleep.  I closed my eyes and did my best to get comfortable.  For the better part of two hours I tried my darndest, but I was unable to lose consciousness.

Food, glorious food

Our misgivings at the check-in counter resolved themselves into deep concern when the stewardesses confirmed we were not on the kosher meal list.  The regular meals, while produced in Israel, were entirely without markings on them.  There was a single extra kosher meal, which they gladly gave to us.  And then, we began foraging.  In the row behind us were two religious young women who didn't seem interested at all in the kosher meals they'd ordered.  They happily passed us their meals, minus the main, hot portion which one girl preferred to keep for herself.  We beseeched the flight staff to pass on to us any unopened kosher meals.  In the end, we had 5.5 meals, instead of the seven we were eligible for.  But since the kids don't have enormous appetites for airplane food, we ended up having one and a half intact meals left over. 

Down to the bitter end

Most of the flight went smoothly - the kids were locked into their screens, the three littles ones fell asleep, and the flight staff was able to supply us with ample amounts of kosher food.  About an hour before landing (already after midnight for us), we had an unpleasant surprise: both Elisheva and Noam (5) had wet themselves while sleeping.  Now I felt like I was in a Mission Impossible movie - the aisles were blocked by carts collecting garbage, only one bathroom was unoccupied, I was in one aisle and the still-sleeping children in the other, and the changes of clothes were in an undisclosed location in one of the carry on bags.  Somehow I made it happen, but we were still in the bathroom (all three of us crammed in together) when the plane started to descend.  

We all got seated again, but since Elisheva seat was a little wet, she sat on my lap during the descent.  About 20 minutes before we landed, she started bawling inconsolably.  She was deep in the overtired-insane state in which she ignores any attempt to get information out of her regarding the source of her anguish.  I assumed it was ears, and I urged her to take a drink of water.  She refused.  After the plane actually landed, I asked her if she wanted to go to Michal.  Within seconds she stopped crying.  Somewhere in all this chaos I vowed to never again do transatlantic travel with kids under the age of 6.

Welcome to Canada, please remove your shoes

We landed in Toronto, with a connection in just under two hours to Boston.  Due to congestion in the airfield, it took us nearly half an hour to reach our gate.  Once off the plane, we began to hustle to our connecting flight.  We were directed to a separate connecting area for flights to the US.  We had known that we going to go through US passport control in Toronto, but we didn't understand the full import of that fact.  Now we hit full-blown all-American paranoid security.  Take off your shoes, belts, etc.  

I am involved in a startup that is developing a platform for winery management and substance monitoring. A week ago my partner and I made a professional visit to a boutique winery in order to collect data.  When we were done there, the owner gifted each of us with a rather pricy bottle of wine.  When preparing for the flight, the Air Canada website stated that alcohol needs to be transported in a carry on bag, and declared at check in.  At check in for our first flight, I mentioned that a had a bottle of wine with me, and the attendant just sort of nodded okay.  Now, in Toronto, the TSA agent gave me two choices: let go of the wine, or check it as luggage.  I looked behind me.  We had already waited twenty minutes in line for security.  Our flight left in an hour and fifteen minutes.  I was going to say "You should really just take it home and drink it yourself", but I caught myself.  The TSA agent was a Muslim woman - she'd probably get insulted if I suggest she ingest alcohol.  So I said, "Really, someone should take it and drink it - it's a really good bottle of wine."  She shrugged and said, "We can't do that", as she dropped it unceremoniously into the trash can behind her.  I wondered if she meant that it's alcohol, so she can't drink it, or that the TSA policy forbids taking any confiscated goods.  I know she meant the latter, but I hope she really meant both.  Either way, the fancy bottle of booze I'd planned to give my mother on her birthday was lost to a flight security catch-22: on the way into Canada, I had to have it in my carry on.  On the way out of Canada, it had to be checked.  In between, there wasn't even time to go the bathroom.

Noam had been complaining that he needs to use the bathroom from just before the time the plane touched down.  Half an hour later, we made it through security and reached the automated visa machines.  Looking back on our travails, I'm remembered of a line from one of the best movies of all time, The Princess Bride.  Westley and Princess Buttercup are braving the perils of the fire swamp in an attempt to escape their pursuers.  Just after escaping from the fire spurts lightning sand, Westley says confidently to his love that they're safe now, seeing as the purported "rodents of unusual size" most likely don't even exist.  And then one jumps on him.

These automated machines take almost as much time as filling out the entire form manually.  They have a glass panel with a scanner underneath.  You put the photo page of the passport face down, and it's supposed to do all the work.  Supposed to.  It works very slowly, sometimes not clear if it's working at all.  It took us many minutes to convince the machine to scan all our passports, and then another drawn out few minutes while it "processed the request" and finally printed out the little papers.  All the while Noam reminded us more and more urgently that he needed to pee.  We walked around to the next stage: the line to the customs agents.  The line moved along at a reasonable pace, but at this point the kids started to really go bonkers.  A woman behind us in line sympathized with us, while Michal remarked that from the time you start security to the time you get through to the terminal takes almost an hour - enough for a person to keel over from dehydration (since you can't bring liquids through).  Finally we made it through, with 25 minutes to takeoff.  

We found our gate (after a pitstop) and saw that they were still boarding.  Then we looked up and saw that the flight was to Los Angeles, not Boston.  I inquired about a flight to Boston, but the woman at the desk had no idea what I wanted.  We skipped over to the giant flight monitor nearby, and saw that our flight had been moved from it's original gate.  We walked another five minutes, and got to the right place, at last.  15 minutes left until takeoff.  I lurked off to a corner of the boarding area to quickly get in the afternoon prayer.  Michal shouted after me something about my boarding pass, but I was too stressed and overtired to really care, or even hear what she was saying.  I finished praying with four people still in line to board.  I walked over, to the desk, saw that the attendant had Moriah's passport and boarding pass.  She knew I was the adult that the infant passenger was responsible for, but she needed by boarding pass.  I said I don't have it, that my wife had boarded already and taken it with.  After some hemming and hawing she printed me out a new boarding pass, and the other attendant was to accompany me onto the plane to see my passport.  Again I was the last person to board the plane.  On the plane, I was told that Chanania had been sent to bring me my passport and boarding pass while I was praying, and he'd put it in the pocket of my backpack.  How was I supposed to know this?  It didn't matter any more.  We were clear.  The plane didn't push off for a while, because apparently one passenger had checked in luggage, but not shown up for the flight.  I was glad that we were not in that situation.  Then, all of a sudden, another passenger boarded the plane, a woman I'd seen at the gate when I boarded.  Was she the no-show?  Then we hadn't she boarded earlier?  I got no answers to these questions in my head.

This second flight was very short and uneventful, until near the end.  Less than half an hour before landing, Elisheva began her inconsolable wailing once more.  She refused to sit or be held - she lowered herself to the floor and refused to budge.  Then, suddenly, she began to vomit.  I scrounged for an air sickness bag, but none were to be found.  She finished vomiting, I ran to the bathroom to get some paper towels to wipe up the floor, and then I found myself in an oddly familiar situation: in the airplane bathroom, getting a child cleaned up, with the plane rapidly descending.

The Show's Not Over Until They're All Asleep

We landed in Boston, at 8:30 local time, and quickly made our way to the baggage claim.  Three of our four suitcases arrived.  Michal and two of the kids went off in search of someone to file a claim with, and I collapsed on a nearby bench with the rest of the kids.  At the same time she was trying to contact her sister, Sonya, who was coming to pick us up.  Another flight's luggage came through our turnstile.  Still nothing.  Eventually, Michal reappeared, having found the right person, and told me that Sonya was outside.  I sent the older kids out to find there aunt, and I began to drag the suitcases one by one.  Sonya was a beam of bright sunshine after our long and wearying journey.  The car was ready, trunk emptied, car seats in place, fresh fruit for all to enjoy.  I was starting to feel like maybe the end was in sight.  Adam, Sonya's husband, was on his way with a second car.  I loaded the suitcases into the car, strapped Moriah, Elisheva, and Amiel into the back seat, and left Michal (who hadn't finished filing the lost luggage claim) with three kids, the stroller, and some backpacks.  As soon as Moriah was buckled in she started screaming.  I assured Sonya (and myself) that she'll calm down and fall asleep as soon as the car starts moving.  I wasn't entirely wrong, but her screaming lasted longer than expected, and only about 10 minutes into the ride she finally quieted down.  We made it to their house, I put Moriah straight into her bed, and immediately started getting the two (who had only drowsed a little in the car) ready as well.  The second carload arrived before I had done much, and everyone else poured into the house.  We had been given the basement suite, two bedrooms and a bathroom.  There were two beds less than the total number of people, so the foldout couch in the living room was utilized as well.  At around 11 o'clock (which was 6 in the morning for us!), we were finally able to hit the hay.  It had been a long day.  Perhaps the longest day in my entire life.