I left you last week with the following closing sentence. “Something tells me I need to get a good night’s sleep if I’m going to be up to partnering Bernice in taking our threesome to the model farm and toy tractor driving track tomorrow morning.” In the event, this proved to be partly accurate and partly very wide of the mark. I had imagined that I needed my energy to keep up with the three musketeers going round a farm and pedalling toy tractors. Little did I know!
Bernice and I certainly got our good night’s sleep, in our comfortable and very quiet Airbnb. By the time we had woken, abluted, driven over to Esther and Maayan’s flat, and had a leisurely breakfast, everyone agreed that the sun was rather too high in the sky for a day at the farm with no shade. The proposed Plan B was a gymboree in the Zichron Mall, which was sold to us as a good news and bad news deal: ‘The good news is there’s efficient air conditioning; the bad news is it’s early August and the place will be full of screaming children.’
Despite the bad news, the prospect of sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned space, watching the grandsons climbing and swinging and sliding and jumping, sounded very attractive, and so we all readily agreed to Plan B. Little did I know!
After a short drive, we arrived at the mall, ‘we’ being Bernice, Tslil and myself in charge of Tao, Raphael and Ollie. Raphael led us competently through the mall to the Gymboree, and, a couple of minutes and a not unreasonable amount of money later (adults free), we were all shoeless, the kids wearing their newly-purchased rubber-dimple-soled socks, and the adults wearing the socks we had brought especially for the occasion.
Walking into the space was a revelation. Bernice and I had previously taken Tao and Ollie to a gymboree in Portugal, but this was an experience at an entirely different level. The thickness of cushioned padding around all the apparatus, the level of sound absorption, the complexity, range and sheer scale of the apparatus were all very impressive indeed. I soon discovered, however, that the afternoon was going to be a whole other good news and bad news deal than the one anticipated. The level of noise was very reasonable; such was the scale of the place that, even though there were plenty of children there, it did not feel overfull. The air-conditioning was indeed excellent.
However, while I saw many, many fathers, all of whom were at least 30 and in some cases over 40 years younger than me, sitting on the floor at the side while their children clambered over, under, through, round, along and between the apparatus, Raphael, to whom I had been assigned, had other ideas. When one of your four-year-old grandsons calls out: “Come on, Grandpa!” it would take a man even harder-hearted than me to cock a deaf’un.
Not that I followed him everywhere. He started on a cylindrical, four-storeyed installation that could be accessed through a hole I doubted I could fit through and that had a ceiling clearance at each level that barely reached my shoulders. When one of the several constantly circulating and ever-watchful attendants heard Raphael calling me to follow, and saw the sceptical expression on my face, he told me that I couldn’t manage that ascent, and that there was one round the corner that was far more adult-scale. Raphael willingly came back down and led me to the other ascent and, for the next hour, all of my energy went into keeping up with Raphael, or at least keeping him in sight.
It is astonishing how much I can still do, physically, when driven by the twin incentives of not wanting to shatter Raphael’s illusion that I can still do it, and not being able to contemplate facing Bernice and telling her that Raphael is somewhere in the two acres and four floors of the Gymboree, but I can’t say exactly where.
After about an hour, when I had settled into a rhythm and got my second wind and was feeling that I could easily handle this, Ollie joined us. (Tao, needless to say, was off in a league and a world of his own and Tslil was able to keep a much less eagle eye on him.) Eager to do everything Raphael was doing, but not always quite as capable or confident, Ollie presented me with a new challenge, of staying close enough to Raphael not to lose sight of him and simultaneously close enough to Ollie to keep an eye on him as well. Somehow, I managed to negotiate thirty minutes of being with them both, and, when the boys reached a consensus that they were ready to call it a day after a very intense 90 minutes, I could even pretend that I was disappointed to be leaving so early.
Outside again, we had sandwiches and a drink, and then the boys rode a ten-shekel automat carousel. All the boys know that, when we go to malls with them, they can sit in the cars and fire-trucks or on the horses, but neither Nana nor Grandpa is going to part with ten shekels to add the music and movement. However, on this special occasion, and with the per capita outlay coming in at less than 3.34 shekels, I pushed the boat out. Of course, nobody had a ten-shekel coin, but, these days, mind-blowingly, these penny arcade machines accept credit card payments.
While we were in Zichron, we also spent time in the pool Esther and family belong to. Less grand than the country club, this is the pool on Kibbutz Maayan Zvi, and Esther and I had a great time with Raphael and Tao.
Apart from that, we were mostly just hanging out, in the very hot August days we have been having. Leisurely evenings on the third-floor balcony, enjoying the sea breeze that reaches Zichron, and savouring Esther and Maayan’s excellent homemade pizza, felt so special, just because we were all together with nothing special to do. We left on Wednesday evening, leaving Esther and family to go camping in the north the next day, and Micha’el and family to go to the centre for a few days of mostly visits with Tslil’s family.
Meanwhile, we came home to our big, empty house and enjoyed a very quiet Shabbat. Quiet, that is, except for a brief interlude on Shabbat afternoon, when, in less than an hour, Maale Adumim enjoyed the greatest amount of rain in a single day in August ever to fall anywhere in Israel. It came out of nowhere, with no warning, and left as suddenly, and was, in the interim, spectacular. The garden looks grateful for it; the cars, rather than being left looking mud-streaked, as is normal with unseasonal rain, gleamed afterwards; our street looked like the rapids and the new tunnel to Maale Adumim flooded.
It has been refreshing, and, for us, nostalgic, to be remarking on the weather in August in Israel. However, we now seem to be back to typical August weather, and today (Tuesday) temperatures have dropped to the seasonal norm, for a change, after what has been, until now, a very hot spell.
Micha’el and family arrived back with us today. Esther and family are arriving tomorrow, and will stay until Shabbat. Then, next Tuesday, the trip ends and we revert to our routine, doubtless cherishing the memories of a very special few weeks.
