Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Our kind of place

Where should we live? The plan was always to move to Israel, and here we are. Faced with the choice of which city to choose as our home, my husband and I decided to make a temporary move to Jerusalem and figure it out from there. We lived here for two years as students and it’s what we knew. And where would we live if we could live anywhere in Jerusalem? Nachlaot, of course.

Actually, I don’t know how Nachlaot came to capture my imagination while we lived in America. When I lived in Jerusalem six years ago, I thought this neighborhood was sort of eye-rollingly crunchy. And hard to navigate with its winding alleyways.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Happy birthday All Victories

Three pleasures of this day:

My daughters patiently explained to me how hide-and-seek is played. The world is created anew each moment.

I wanted to send A.N. to her room to cool down and leave her there. She was whining and ordering everyone around and it was bugging me mightily. I deposited her in her bedroom, and she said, “Ima, stay. I want you to do ‘Shh-mmm-ahhh’ with me.” That’s a breathing exercise that I learned at a workshop with Dahlia Orlev and taught to my kids. And now they use it to calm themselves down. Awesome.