You can kind of go home again

The girls (particularly Rosa) really wanted to return to our old haunts: Karmiel (where we lived from April to July 2001), up in the Galil, and Nahariya, our favorite beach town/day trip throughout that period.

Karmiel is still a very pretty town - city parks, public art, beautiful setting in the high desert foothills of the North. The whole downtown shop-lined (Russian and Israeli) pedestrian mall is being dug up for, presumably, urban renewal purposes.

Tanya remembered more than Rosa (who lived there through the end of her 1st grade year) but Rosa said: "Show me the playgrounds - I'll remember."
(The novelty ice cream bars, too: that was the magical time that was - when Mommy allowed "lunch dessert" AND "dinner dessert.")

We had to revisit our apartment complex (photo would be inserted here but my camera was too low on battery-juice): a Stalinist era-looking series of tunnel-shaped blocks, the "Lev" (the mall just blocks away), and the city's cultural hall. We were too hot to trek to the city pool, the library, and the bowling alley (where they would set little Rosa up with bowling bumpers and a "ball chute" for easy aiming)

Highlights of our pilgrimage:

• The 'Matnas' (community center) where the girls took dance classes twice a week and where Rosa would sit glued to the set watching Little Lulu cartoons and a Spanish kids' soap opera with Hebrew subtitles which she could not possibly understand (the TV has been replaced with a larger, flatter screen model)
• The market across the street where I would shop while the girls were in dance
• The site of "the melon incident" (story below)
• The bridge where Mommy first sang the Cat Alphabet song for the girls' immense amusement (no comment on that one)
• The overpass under which we would walk and enjoy the Hebrew graffiti in spray-painted tribute to singer "Snopp Doogie Doog."
• The infamous spinning playground toy on which Rosa did a flip and slightly split the back of her head, uttering the now famous family catchphrase that annoys the hell out of her and I would not recommend repeating in her presence, "I cracked my head open and now I'll never be the same!" (Her concern, of course, stemmed from a lifetime of hearing the traditional Jewish parental warning passed down over generations: 'Stop that or you'll crack your head open!!')

Interestingly, as we were about to drive out of town, Rosa requested not to return to Jerusalem but instead wished we could just stay in Karmiel which was familiar, less crowded, contained fewer ugly buildings and had fewer "weird" people. True, and sad. But how could Jerusalem be something other than it is? The "Center of the World" can't be anything but fully, intensely, dramatically, insanely human -- and, truthfully, how pleasant can that be?

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As promised: The Melon Incident

Time: Spring 2001
Background/Context: Rosa (aka Buppy), among her many extremely charming and delightful traits, was gifted with a great talent for falling, whacking herself into things and others, losing and dropping a variety of objects and possessions.
Setting: We are leaving the market across from the Matnas and heading for home. Among our produce is a melon of unknown type - It's intended for Rosa, who will only eat orange, cantaloupe-type melon, and I still can't differentiate Israeli melon varieties and their interior colors. Tanya and I are carrying groceries and Buppy requests to carry home the melon.
Story: I look at her skeptically: "No, Bup, I don't think so." "Please! I won't drop it!" Famous last words. I know what will inevitably happen and I won't let her hold it. She becomes offended, and I finally, skeptically, relent.
"Hold it very tight, Buppy - do not drop it!"
She embraces it in her little arms and we walk down the steep hill toward our apartment.
Two minutes? Three? Can't be more than 4 minutes when the melon tumbles out of her arms and starts rolling.
"Buppy!"
"I couldn't help it!"
We start to run after the melon and it finally goes off the curb and stops. We run toward it and just as we near, it starts rolling again. It goes into the middle of the street -- cars are racing by (this is Israel, after all) - it goes under cars - we cringe -- it's surely about to be flattened -- it keeps going -- it stops, amazingly, by the curb again. We can't believe it -- we run to pick it up -- it starts rolling again - again under cars, again against the curb. The couple of times it stops we get within feet of it before it randomly takes off again. Then - a large truck -- SPLAT. It's finished. I am extremely displeased. We run up to it and stare at it from the sidewalk. We are all completely quiet - we just stand there - staring at the smashed fruit.
"Well," Rosa finally says, "at least it was a green one!"