Motzai Shabbat, and an Ending
(nablopomo, day the last: 31)
I am feeling very strange this motzei Shabbat. Again, we had a pleasant Shabbat, with friends, in our beautiful setting here, right outside of our townhome. It was a very hot day: in the 90s, but actually felt even hotter, as there was no cloud cover at all.
I had been sitting outside with my friend's mother (who lives with her, and is also a friend)--in the 90 degree sun; we were trying to get in our daily dose of vitamin D, but I think we over did it. After twenty minutes or so, I felt as if I was going to melt, and we called it quits. This was after 1:00 p.m. but before lunch (seudah sheniyah). Believe it or not, my D. H. comes home late from shul, (Chabad) and I myself haven't been going to shul lately, enjoying my peace and quiet alone in the house, davening or reading the parsha. Or a book. Or the Wall Street Journal.
Good thing I didn't go today. I would have had heatstroke, chas ve-shalom. My D.H. came home barely walking, it was so hot. We both went inside, he made kiddush, we washed and made hamotzi and sat down to eat lunch--and chain drank iced tea, chugging away our entire pitcher full (don't you dare say there is no global warming)! We had begun to dehydrate, both of us. It was worse for D. H., though, because he had just walked a mile from shul to home. We needed an infusion of water and probably electrolytes; we settled for iced tea, however.
Even though we haven't lived in the home that we used to own, since the year 2003 when we had to sell it (D.H. had been unemployed once before, then...and the time had come when we couldn't continue paying the mortgage anymore), and I miss it--G-d has been good to us. I say this, because we have been living now for six years in a cozy rental town-home in a beautiful setting, surrounded by good friends and neighbors. It is like a little yishuv*.
I say this, even though we had lived in our house for 19 years, raised our children there, and now my D. H. is unemployed again, in this terrible economic downturn. We could have been much worse off. We are lucky to be living here, while looking for jobs.
But somehow I feel this is temporary; it is just an interlude, a lull before the 'storm,' the Big Change: our ultimate goal is to go back to Israel. We do not have a timetable yet (there are some important medical and financial things to take care of first), but that is our plan. Maybe this is a holding pattern...we are in transition, preparing for the next phase in our lives.
With Divine intervention we were placed in an even better area, after the trauma of having to sell our house, and first move into a friend's basement for 4 months. It's just a question of biding one's time during the transition, trying to keep an even keel, because "this too shall pass."
My dream is to have the means to help the Jewish people in some manner--relieve poverty and hunger, or help orphans, or support the IDF in some material way--and live next door to at least one of my children and my grandchildren, and be a part of all their lives. I have no other ambition. Not career, not fame. I'm not planning on writing a book, although I had thought about it for a while. But nobody would be interested in my memoir, as I'm just an ordinary human being, with no great accomplishment or ideas to impart to the world (okay, so I'll tack on buying a boat to that dream--for my D.H., who has it all planned out when we win the lottery--!).
With this post, Nablopomo is done for July. I am not signing up for daily blogging during the month of August--I need a rest. It's kind of sad, though. All endings are.
I'm not sure what this mix of emotions is that I am feeling this motzai Shabbat, after hearing havdalah in a moving Carlebach melody, and singing my motzai Shabbat zemirot--just like on the Moshav. I think it is merely an intense awareness of. . . the passage of time.
*Yishuv: Hebrew for settlement
I am feeling very strange this motzei Shabbat. Again, we had a pleasant Shabbat, with friends, in our beautiful setting here, right outside of our townhome. It was a very hot day: in the 90s, but actually felt even hotter, as there was no cloud cover at all.
I had been sitting outside with my friend's mother (who lives with her, and is also a friend)--in the 90 degree sun; we were trying to get in our daily dose of vitamin D, but I think we over did it. After twenty minutes or so, I felt as if I was going to melt, and we called it quits. This was after 1:00 p.m. but before lunch (seudah sheniyah). Believe it or not, my D. H. comes home late from shul, (Chabad) and I myself haven't been going to shul lately, enjoying my peace and quiet alone in the house, davening or reading the parsha. Or a book. Or the Wall Street Journal.
Good thing I didn't go today. I would have had heatstroke, chas ve-shalom. My D.H. came home barely walking, it was so hot. We both went inside, he made kiddush, we washed and made hamotzi and sat down to eat lunch--and chain drank iced tea, chugging away our entire pitcher full (don't you dare say there is no global warming)! We had begun to dehydrate, both of us. It was worse for D. H., though, because he had just walked a mile from shul to home. We needed an infusion of water and probably electrolytes; we settled for iced tea, however.
Even though we haven't lived in the home that we used to own, since the year 2003 when we had to sell it (D.H. had been unemployed once before, then...and the time had come when we couldn't continue paying the mortgage anymore), and I miss it--G-d has been good to us. I say this, because we have been living now for six years in a cozy rental town-home in a beautiful setting, surrounded by good friends and neighbors. It is like a little yishuv*.
I say this, even though we had lived in our house for 19 years, raised our children there, and now my D. H. is unemployed again, in this terrible economic downturn. We could have been much worse off. We are lucky to be living here, while looking for jobs.
But somehow I feel this is temporary; it is just an interlude, a lull before the 'storm,' the Big Change: our ultimate goal is to go back to Israel. We do not have a timetable yet (there are some important medical and financial things to take care of first), but that is our plan. Maybe this is a holding pattern...we are in transition, preparing for the next phase in our lives.
With Divine intervention we were placed in an even better area, after the trauma of having to sell our house, and first move into a friend's basement for 4 months. It's just a question of biding one's time during the transition, trying to keep an even keel, because "this too shall pass."
My dream is to have the means to help the Jewish people in some manner--relieve poverty and hunger, or help orphans, or support the IDF in some material way--and live next door to at least one of my children and my grandchildren, and be a part of all their lives. I have no other ambition. Not career, not fame. I'm not planning on writing a book, although I had thought about it for a while. But nobody would be interested in my memoir, as I'm just an ordinary human being, with no great accomplishment or ideas to impart to the world (okay, so I'll tack on buying a boat to that dream--for my D.H., who has it all planned out when we win the lottery--!).
With this post, Nablopomo is done for July. I am not signing up for daily blogging during the month of August--I need a rest. It's kind of sad, though. All endings are.
I'm not sure what this mix of emotions is that I am feeling this motzai Shabbat, after hearing havdalah in a moving Carlebach melody, and singing my motzai Shabbat zemirot--just like on the Moshav. I think it is merely an intense awareness of. . . the passage of time.
*Yishuv: Hebrew for settlement
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