There are three houses on the kibbutz: Aleph, Bet and Gimmel. Today, in honor of several of us being home from (or out of) work, Tamar threw us a lovely day of eating, crafting, and lazing about together.
I flipped pancakes and made scrambled eggs while others thawed some of the strawberries we froze over the summer to make sauce, whipped fresh cream, and sliced peaches. Plums, I had picked from the backyard on my way over. I love our little Italian plum trees. The fruits are such easy, three-bite things. I've eaten dozens of them in the last few weeks, laugh to see them for $3 a pound at the supermarket. They grow so fast we have to dry them, pie them and stew them just to keep up. And that's not counting the ones we nosh by the bowlful.
We ate breakfast together, sitting down. Azura showed up after her night shift, guzzled some coffee, and knit an endless hat, talking about her new beau. Joel helped himself to five pancakes right off the bat, listened to Neal's advice about what combination of toppings worked best (maple syrup, whipped cream, peaches and strawberry sauce). Carrie, a new one, just moved in yesterday, poured salsa on her eggs and munched contentedly. Asya, another new one, looked out the window and made plans to go shopping for things like pots, pans and pillows.
In the next several hours, Tamar tried to help me sew a patch onto my ripped jeans, but I only succeeded in jamming her sewing machine. I remembered how my grandmother gave up on me "as a hopeless case for knitting" when I was ten. I didn't mind then, and I don't really mind now - she promised I could trade her some other service, cooking or cleaning, in exchange for the two pairs of pants she mended for me. Lunch. Tamar fed us minestrone, with lots of cheese on top. Some people throw a pile of vegetables into a stew pot and call it ratatouille. Some call it chili. Some call it kitchen sink stew, some call it Mulligatawny. Tamar calls it minestrone. It's belly soul soup.
Joel finally got his stereo set up, and the soundtrack of the day was a mix of klezmer, shel silverstein (he made records! who knew?), paul simon...I lay on the couch for a long time and read Joe Sacco's Occupation, a graphic novel about Palestine circa 1991-1992. Later that night, we watch an Israeli movie about an army band, and I can't stop thinking the old thoughts: kids. The singers in this movie are eighteen year old kids, so many soldiers are eighteen year old kids. Why do we let a government draft kids into a war? Who the hell has any sense at eighteen? And we give them guns??
Deb and Ilana are home when I get there. Ilana says let's go out to the moon. the moon is so beautiful tonight, and we go, barefoot and a little shivery, we troop out into the cul-de-sac and watch that great bald beauty, settling in for the graveyard shift.
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