A Mother's Day blog series

Last Monday, Ronni Bennett launched a Mother’s Day series at The Elder Storytelling Place, an adjunct to her blog, Time Goes By.

Since then, each day, she has posted a new story, and today, Mother's Day, she has posted mine!

You can read my story, Happy birthday mother. Where are you? and from there link to the other six in the series.

As I approach my two-year blogging anniversary, I look to this story (first posted here exactly one year ago) as the one that most reveals who I am.

I have struggled with concerns, probably all excuses, about writing anything private or personal in my blog. Well, not too private or too personal. Yet those concerns vanished as I wrote about my mother, now in her ninth decade.

My mother's astonishing life has been marked by prodigious talents, extraordinary adventures, and exceptional accomplishments. Yet devastating tragedies and losses tripped her soul on her long, long journey to today.

Happy Mother's Day, mother.

Years ago, while you were fully present in spirit, you told me that you felt like an ancient tortoise.

Happy Mother's Day, too, to the many women and men who have mothered me along the way.

Donating Israeli flags to honor elders, country, and faith

For months, Yehudit and her husband, Yisrael, owners of the Weizman Leeman Flag Store and small factory on Tel Aviv’s Brenner Street, have been working nonstop (except during Shabbat, Passover, and the brit [circumcision] of their first great-grandchild). They have been producing flags and filling orders to meet the heightened demand in Israel this season marking Holocaust Memorial Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day.

The couple loves their country of 7 million people and is proud of it. Both of them exude a sense of good fortune and privilege to be part of the historic process of the rebirth of the state of Israel in its ancient homeland, the land of Israel.

Last Friday, amid the steadily mounting pressures to meet her customers' deadlines, Yehudit called about a commitment I had made to her last month:

Tamar, when are you coming to pick up the flags you promised to bring to the Beit Avot [Home for the Aged] where you volunteer? I want each resident to have a flag and for the Home to have flags everywhere on Yom Haatzmaut [Independence Day].

Not a little ashamed that I forgot and grateful to call such a woman, friend, I hurried to pick up the bundle of gifts.

At the Beit Avot on nearby Yavne Street, I pressed it into Ada's hands. As this director of programs and services gasped and shouted out, we laughed and wept, her expression (captured in the photo) saying everything.

Question: How do I know such righteous people?

Answer: By hanging out with their emissaries.

Yedidia, an Atlanta Torah MiTzion program havruta (Aramaic term for study partner), instructed me to visit his maternal grandparents when I returned to Tel Aviv.

Just go to Allenby Street and slightly past the Carmel Market on your right, turn left onto Brenner Street. I forgot the number but go to the first or second building on the right and look for Weizman Leeman Flag Store on the mailbox. Up one flight, and you are there.

The Beit Avot I came to through Susanne, an artist and fellow American-Israeli who lifts up the resident elders (and their devoted staff) by leading group art projects and visiting 1:1 weekly. She observes carefully and listens attentively to what she hears in their native Russian, Hungarian, Yiddish, or Romanian (and with those who can, she speaks in the Hebrew she began studying only five years ago). Susanne touches hearts and strokes hands, sometimes triggering memories and stories and always bringing smiles.

Transitioning from grief to celebration on Israel's 60th birthday

From Holocaust Day to Memorial Day one week later is not a happy time around here, and the sadness is intensified by the mess our leaders are in. So entered Karen Alkalay-Gut in her Tel Aviv Diary yesterday.

On this week that Karen describes, I —

• Broke my silent reflection, on Holocaust Martyrs' and Heros' Remembrance Day, and accepted Stephanie’s sensitive, thoughtful invitation to join her, in Atlanta, in a Skype-recorded conversation with me, now in Israel. And she posted Holocaust Remembrance Day: A Conversation on her blog in hopes that visitor-listeners might reflect on the gruesome realities of the past. Gruesome realities that continue to threaten everyone, everywhere, always.

• Am remembering my cousin Noam Yaakov Mayerson today, Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers and victims of terror. His parents will be arriving soon at the Mount Herzl military cemetery, joining other families and friends at the graves of their loved ones. August 7, 2006, Noam was killed when Hezbollah terrorists opened fire on an Israel Defense Forces unit in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.

• Finally, will join Shimon this evening in one of hundreds of ceremonies nationwide when Israeli flags will be raised from their half-mast positions — marking the transition from grief to celebration. After sunset, the start of a new day, we are commemorating this Israel Independence Day sixty years since the rebirth of the state of Israel in its ancient homeland, the land of Israel.

Tonight, we celebrate what is so easy to overlook, to miss, to scorn, and to despise in this dazzling country bursting with the bitter and the sweet.

Happy, happy birthday, Israel. And endless more. Never ending. Everlasting. For eternity.

!יום עצמאות שמח

Holocaust Remembrance Day and Vivi's timely e-mail

Dear Tamar -- Hi! How are you? Is Tel Aviv nice? In school, we are doing a historical fiction novel. I'm doing mine in WWII. It's about a girl and her family who take in a Jewish family. I would like to use your name as the mother in the Jewish family. If that is okay, please say yes. I can't wait for your response. See you soon. Love, Vivi


Dear Author Vivi! — I love you, and I love your letter and question. I am THRILLED to be the mother in the Jewish family. I hope "we" are taken into a family as loving as yours. Did I ever tell you that a Catholic convent in Turin, Italy, took in my mother's Italian cousins Miriam and Aviva during World War II? As Jews, their lives were in mortal danger especially during that period. Both girls were almost swayed into the Catholic faith because they were at an age (around yours) when fitting in is s-o-o-o-o important. After the war, they came out of hiding and were returned to their parents. They slowly adjusted to who they were before the war (not that you can ever undo life experiences and be who you once were). In their later years, they both moved to Israel. Oh, I am doing great and Tel Aviv is a really fabulous place. Kisses, Tamar


Dear Tamar -- Thanks so much for being in my book. It's really cool that your relations were taken in by a Catholic convent. But it must have been sort of awkward. And speaking of awkward, I forgot to tell you some big news: Kramers is dead. It's very sad, isn't it? I don't know how he died, but he was at least 14. That's pretty old, for a cat. Anyway, we can't wait until you get back. Love, Vivi


NOTE: Ten-year-old Vivienne is a honors student at a public elementary school for high achievers in Atlanta, Georgia. We have been friends about ten years. Vivi plays piano and flute, is an active Girl Scout, studies ballet, and has performed in the Cherub Choir and Junior Choir at Trinity Presbyterian Church. An adoring younger sister to Caroline, Vivi appears regularly on this blog. Previous posts include —

• Bethlehem bound
  
• Vivi soars in Atlanta production of Aristophanes' "The Birds"
• At Atlanta's Inman Park Festival: Vivi marches to the beat of the band

Why I blog

On my blog reading rounds this morning, I came across an interesting musing here, on Mining Nuggets. Tamar (yes, there is at least one other blogging Tamar) writes, "Once again, I question why I blog." She then explores myriad possible answers, and concludes not with an answer but with a question: "... should I just ... well ... kick the habit?"

In reply to her intriguing question, why blog? I simply opened a vein, and out flowed this comment, almost verbatim.

I blog to process my busy life and mind. With all that draws me to explore, challenge, change, consider, and do, I look forward to the discipline of sorting through the myriad inputs and my responses and to make sense of the mix. In identifying the parts and arranging them in a coherent order or design, I can put the experience into a usable, even more interesting shape. For me and for anyone else.

And I love the connections that happen through my blog. Meeting fellow bloggers or commenters offers me amazing company — classmates, colleagues, rich content — here, in my school without walls in a universe-ity of infinite links. I don't like walls, and schools are not buildings where someone else decides what's good for me to learn, and when.

So, why do you blog? Or, why not?