Tikkun Olam

I loved flying in my youth (no, I don't mean drugs). It was so rare that I did it, and such an adventure. Not the long hours constricted on a plane, the lack of leg room, the recirculating bacteria-laden, canned air, nor the(current) boredom - none of it bothered me. I wasn't bored, I was thrilled! Now, flying to me is an ordeal; and this was a short trip (relatively speaking), approximately four hours to New York, " deh oldt cahntree" - my hometown. We took the red-eye, taking off after midnight and landing at 6 a.m. I was exhausted, and had developed a sinus post-nasal drip two days before and hadn't slept the night before our flight. But at least I thought that I would be able to sleep a bit. No such luck-hey, are those seats getting narrower, or am I getting wider? (-that's a rhetorical question, buddy.) But then, we finally arrived in New Yawk City: The sights! The smells! The wet cold insinuating itself into one's bones! The dull gray monochromatic...

We just returned from Israel today; if you start the count from the time we left for the airport in Tel-Aviv to the time we landed here in the mountain time zone where we live, it was a sojourn of twenty-three hours, including flight-time, waiting on airport lines (JFK was the worst) in order to get our boarding passes, checking overstuffed pieces of luggage, etc. -not to mention squeezing our tushes into those tiny little airplane seats and sitting for 11 hours watching our feet bloat. Suffice it to say, we're back. And except for the driving, I miss Israel already. Might be the fact that I have four (count 'em--4) kids there. One was just married-the reason for our visit back so soon after our last one six months ago-and to my great surprise, two more are in (what they say are) serious relationships . I say, make a double wedding, which would save us a boodle of money (you know, kill two birds with one stone, two for the price of one, etc.) My husband just says send them tic...

Ok, the personal saga has begun; here I am, in sunny FL, with my daughter and grandkids (and the rest of the mishpocheh ) for three days, after which we will all - the whole hamulah , daughter, grandkids & friend (but not the rest of the mishpachah).- will get on an El Al jet and fly non-stop to Israel for my younger son's wedding later in June. It, G-d willing, will be a wonderful simcha. But I anticipate The Trip From H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks . . . if the plane had chandeliers, my grandkids (and I) would probably be swinging from them! The only time in my life that I had ever been on a twelve-hour flight with little kids (three of 'em) was when we made Aliyah, thirty years ago. And I myself was practically a kid then, green around the ears but much younger, and able to take it better, physically and mentally. Now, I'm. . . never mind. Also, I only had two kids then, one being a six-month old baby, which doesn't count. You don't have to worry about mentally o...