[Blogger’s Apology: Published in error 16 hours early. Just live with it!]
[A post title to be understood as a continuation of last week’s ‘The Diminution of Joy’]
To cut to the chase: Micha’el, Tslil, Tao and Ollie arrived safely, on time and well. We were able to break our fast after Tisha b’Av with them all very much here, and while an immediate increase in joy is not religiously mandated, in this particular household it was pretty uncontainable.
Having grown used to being with the family in Portugal for a month every four months, it feels like a very long time since we saw them. The kids’ first planned visit to Israel was torpedoed, or at least ‘missiled’, earlier this year, and it has been over eight months since we hugged them all goodbye as we left Penamacor on 17 November last year. It’s true that we have a story-time and sometimes a puppet show every week, more or less, but the boys are often not very ready to chat during these WhatsApp video calls, far preferring to hear more stories. We naturally appreciate how lucky we generation of grandparents are to be able to have regular aural and visual contact with our further-flung grandchildren (and children), but it’s still a poor second to actually being with them in person.
Settling in was a remarkably smooth and speedy process. After a refresher tour of the house, and a thorough examination of some 15% of the books, toys and games that our resident curator maintains for just such occasions as these, the boys settled into magic sand and Lego. It has to be said that our Lego collection leaves a little to be desired: the ravages of time and assorted play over the decades have cut a fairly wide path through our stock, and “Let’s build a pirate ship” proved a significantly greater imaginative and improvisational challenge here than in Portugal. However, fortunately, both Tao and (constantly learning from his older brother) Ollie lack nothing in the imaginative and improvisational department.
While the boys didn’t actually get to sleep until pretty late Thursday night, everybody reported having a decent night’s sleep, and Friday was spent getting ready for Shabbat and sorting out Micha’el’s working arrangements. This is less a holiday for him than for the rest of the family. As people above my pay grade at the hi-tech company I worked for were fond of remarking: ‘At Amdocs, annual leave means you have the opportunity to work from wherever you want in the world’. In the afternoon, Esther, Ma’ayan, Raphael and Adam arrived from Zichron, meaning that we could all enjoy our first time together since Micha’el and family last came over, almost three years ago.
Shabbat was wonderful, if only too brief. It naturally took the boys, particularly Raphael, a little time to sound each other out, but by the end of Friday evening they were very comfortable together. As for our children and daughters-in-law, my brother and I frequently reflect on how wonderful it is to see how close our children and their partners all are to each other. I managed to get through giving all eight of them a bracha for Shabbat without my eyes tearing up or my voice cracking (not as trivial a matter as it may sound). And the cherry on the cake was that Tao, entirely unprompted, asked why Bernice puts one halla on top of the other when making the bracha, and I was able to talk about manna, and the double portion for Shabbat, at the Shabbat dinner table.
All too soon, Esther and family were heading home again, and then, on Sunday, Micha’el and family left for a week with Tslil’s family. We will then all be together for a couple of days at Nof Ginossar, in a hotel on the Kinneret where someone else will be cooking, washing up and cleaning. I’ll leave our further plans until a later post.
Meanwhile, just a couple of observations about changes we can see in the boys. In seven-year-old Tao, the changes are less dramatic. He has, naturally, grown. He has become more proficient at Lego, and also more easy-going in terms of collaborative play. (With his grandfather, I mean; he has always played very collaboratively with his brother). He seems to be even more comfortable than previously when speaking Hebrew to Tslil, and seems to be speaking it naturally more frequently. The years of Tslil patiently insisting on speaking Hebrew with him, even if he often answered in English, have really paid off. (The same is certainly true of Esther with Raphael.) Tslil also remarked that Tao’s Hebrew accent is more native and less English than it used to be. Not that I can confirm that; it’s way above my ear-grade.
As for four-year-old Ollie, the leap in his fluency has been huge. Last time we were in Portugal, he was speaking well, but now he is constructing elaborate linear sentences. He speaks in a measured tempo, but will not brook being answered before he has completed what he wants to say. “I haven’t finished yet, Grandpa.” He also, uncannily, but entirely predictably, is reaping the benefit of having as an older brother Tao, whose parents have never once spoken down to him as a child. So, for example, when I said that we had found the helicopter pilot’s helmet, Ollie pointed out: “Technically, Grandpa, I found it.”
When they first arrived, the boys came into the house while Micha’el and Tslil were still unloading the car. After the initial hugs and kisses (mostly in one direction, but we were, thankfully, met with less resistance than in the past), Ollie announced: “We brought our parents as well. That’s my Dad there, by the car. We call him Abba.” Incidentally, the use of “Dad” reflects the fact that, with Micha’el and Tslil now working more hours, they have taken a child-minder for a few hours, an English man who lives down the road, and who both of the boys very much enjoy spending time with, thankfully.
Over Shabbat, it was interesting to see how the cousins moved unselfconsciously between English and Hebrew. Rapha’el, who is in a Hebrew-speaking gan and, on a daily basis, hears English only from his Mummy, is much more comfortable in Hebrew. Tao and Ollie, who are in English- and Portuguese-speaking frameworks and, on a daily basis, hear Hebrew only from their ima, are more comfortable in English, but their Hebrew is good (and, no doubt, will be even better after a month in Israel, including a good time with their Hebrew-speaking family).
Which brings you more or less up to date. Now we have a week of wondering whether an assortment of world leaders will allow us to spend a couple of days up North next week, or whether we will have to remortgage the house and take everyone away closer to home, or hire a housekeeper and have everyone stay with us for the week. Whatever the coming week brings, we are all in the same country – in it together, you might say – and that is very, very precious.
