Quick Medical Update: Relative clean bills of health have been issued all round. Bernice is still testing positive; however, since it is now seven days since she first was aware of contracting COVID, government guidelines indicate that she is free to mingle with the general population. Micha’el and Tao seem to have joined Tslil in the land of Postcovidia; poor Ollie still has rather a runny nose and occasional, though much less frequent and much less severe, cough. Esther and Ma’ayan have resurfaced; Raphael’s doctor has today announced that he appears to be clear of any infections, although he is also still suffering from a cold and cough. Horror of horrors, it appears that foot-and-mouth disease is doing the rounds in Zichron, and so Raphael has been advised to keep away from other children (seldom bad advice, in my experience – present company excepted). In short, the entire family is in a much better place this week than last, and Micha’el and family, and, indeed, all of us, are looking forward to enjoying the second two weeks of their trip even more than the first!

Editorial Aside: I thought of posting today at 11 seconds past 11:22 this morning, for obvious reasons, but decided that it would be lost on some (but certainly not all) of my readers, so we’ll stick to the boring old 9AM (my blog – my timezone).

What with one thing and Corona, our outings with Tao in the first two weeks of this visit have been very local and rather unambitious. He has become very familiar with our two closest children’s playgrounds, and we made it a couple of times to the local mall, where there is a wide range of the static children’s rides – usually cars – that can be activated by a five-shekel piece or, I was more astonished to discover than I probably should have been – by swiping a credit card. As luck would have it, we only seemed to have one 5-shekel piece on us each time we went, and both forgot to being our credit cards (at least, that’s our story and we’re sticking to it) but fortunately Tao’s imagination is sufficiently strong, and his expectations sufficiently modest, for him to be satisfied with one electric ride and four or five in which Grandpa and Nana rock the car (and, as the storyline requires, double as rescue helicopters or water-dropping firefighter planes).

However, on Monday of this week, we got to take Tao out properly, to Jerusalem, to the Train Theatre, a children’s puppet theatre that has been a part of the Jerusalem cultural landscape since 1981. The last time we went, when we took our own young children, the theatre was still in its original home, a disused railway carriage, which in itself made every visit a special adventure. Since then, how things have changed! The old railway carriage has been renovated, and converted into a children’s library, while a new complex was opened in 2016, comprising a small theatre space, an outdoor amphitheatre, a snack bar and offices, all in separate buildings that are connected underground by a larger, 140-seat theatre.

One of the delights of taking a bright three-year-old out is that aspects of the outing that I might not even consider can assume tremendous importance. So, before we even parked the car, our afternoon included highlights such as driving alongside, overtaking and being overtaken by, a light-rail train, which Tao initially called a bullet train. He was deceived by the fact that the profile of the structure of the trains is not dissimilar, although we were quick to point out that Jerusalem’s light rail never reaches a speed of 320 kph, or, indeed, much more than 20 kph, although it still managed to beat us through Jerusalem’s city centre traffic.

We had also not deliberately planned our route to include travelling through two tunnels, but this feature certainly met Tao’s approval. Indeed, we almost had to double back on the way home in order to go through one of the tunnels again. Once we arrived at the theatre, comfortably early, the municipality was kind enough to lay on for our benefit a helicopter repeatedly circling overhead. I wish there were an easy way to regain, in cataracted old age, the clarity of vision and delight at the simple wonders of everyday life that a three-year-old can show you.

By this stage I was wondering whether the show itself could match these technological wonders, but I really needn’t have worried. The audience consisted of perhaps 12 two-to-six-year-olds and various parents and grandparents, which was a large enough number to create an atmosphere but a small enough number not to be intimidating. Anat Geiger-Shabtai, the storyteller and puppeteer who performed the show, was completely attuned to her audience and managed to break down any inhibitions within the first couple of minutes of what was a 35-minute story of preparing for, and holding, a birthday party.

Her puppets were ostensibly constructed from everyday discarded objects – a teapot, a bicycle seat, wheels from a toy car. The truth is, of course, that they were in fact constructed from equal parts of these objects and hers, and the children’s, imaginations.

The show was similarly constructed from equal parts of story-telling, simple (which does not, of course, mean easy) puppetry and audience participation that was inviting, inclusive, age-appropriate, and great fun.

We had been unsure how Tao would react to all of this, in his first experience of live theatre. There were a few moments of initial uncertainty – a room full of strangers; a Hebrew-speaking environment with Nana and Grandpa, who are usually exclusively English-speaking. However, after that initial tentativeness, Anat put him, and the entire room, at their ease, and he was soon completely captivated, and showing his delight in imaginative story-telling and his highly developed appreciation of humour.

I’ll stop kvelling now. What I will say is this. I know that it is a wicked thing to project our own tastes and ambitions onto an innocent child. My greatest wish for Tao, as for all of our children and grandchildren, is that they should all live, in fulfilment and contentment, the lives that they choose to live. At the same time, I hope that I am allowed to be very, very happy that, in his first encounter with the magic of theatre, Tao was spellbound. I am therefore delighted to present him with my personal award as most promising newcomer to theatre of 2022.

Meanwhile, Ollie is just starting to wander in the foothills of Mary having a little lamb, and hasn’t yet really made up his mind.