Monday, June 25, 2007

WHAT A DAY

You might want a map for this post. It crisscrosses the north of Israel, several times.
I just came in from a long, but wonderful day. Way back once upon a long time ago, when I lived across the street from Etty and Yaacov, we used to go to Tiberius often to visit their parents, brothers and sisters. All that kind of came to a halt when I moved up here because I didn't have a car. Well, now I do. A few weeks ago Etty told me that her family was having a celebration with all the kids grandkids and great grandkids, and asked if maybe I'd like to go, as in pick them up, and take them home afterwards. Not having seen most of the people who would be there for 17 years, I said sure. This morning I took a quick swing to town, came home to get ready to go. Striar, my refugee from the heat wanted a lift home so I took him up to Safad, swung into Amiad to get water, oil and other levels checked, and headed for Nazareth Elite. Yaron, their oldest, who is over here for his brother in law's wedding on Wednesday was just leaving so I got to see him, if only for a minute. I got there was too early but as Yaacov had left his teeth at his mother's we had to go there first. His sister Aliza called while we were on the way and when she heard we going there anyway insisted that we go to her house first. After a nice rest and visit there we all piled back into the jeep and stopped at Yaacov's mothers. Etty went in to get the teeth and his mom came out and begged us to come in. We promised to come back for a proper visit next week. Then off to the celebration which was held at an Iraqi kebab place in Etty's parents neighborhood. There were zillions of people there and a fair number remembered me from the good old days. Lots of talking and laughing, then on the way out Etty's mother came up to me, gave me a hug and kiss and a blessing for health. I almost lost it then. I'm having a hard time finding the words in English to describe how I felt. It was quite something.
The whole area was crawling with cops and border police all the way home. I haven't heard news yet but I suspect there might have been an alert for a penetration from the north. It happens a lot. I just wanted to get all this down now in case I forget parts in the morning. I'm cross eyed with pain and my feet feel like they are on fire. It's 2330 and 95 degrees out side and I've been driving since 1300. Bed time for this happy if hurty gimp.

5 comments:

The Crawfish said...

Pretty bad when you talk about going all over the northern part of a NATION, when that'd describe us just travelling around parts of one or two counties.

Purplegimp said...

We might be a tiny country but it's a fair bit of driving I did that day.
Safad is about 35 minutes from home, from there to Nazareth is a good hour and 15 minutes, then to Tiberius, another 45 minutes. Then all that in reverse except for Safad. Nazareth to Kiryat Shmonah is an hour and a half depending on traffic in the Arab suburbs of Nazareth.By Israeli standards that's a lot of driving!
For some reason, I had less fatigue driving from Maine to Maimi than I did on Monday's jaunt.

Anonymous said...

Purplegimp, you not finding the words in English? You're too humble. That reminds me of driving someone to JFK just after nine/eleven with security etc. I imagine security is standard fare. Odd it was the first time traffic was easy getting in and out of the terminal pickup. It doesn't have to be that far, but an adventure.

Purplegimp said...

I wasn't at a loss for words, though that has happened too. I just couldn't find them in English. I did have them in English and used them to tell Etty the next day. Funny thing about us bilingual folks, sometimes one language is more suitable than the other for such things.

Purplegimp said...

Opps. I meant that I did find the words in Hebrew....my brain must have been somewhere else when I posted the previous comment.