Botticelli me thumbnail
- Profile -+- Notes -+-Archives-+- E-Mail -+-Diaryland-+- Fotolog -+- Latest -

Honey is Sweet

Well, everything - 2007-06-07

I'm grateful for: well, everything, I guess.

I'm so at a loss. In many, many ways. First thing is that many of my d'land friends have left. And I have no particular loyalty to d-land per se. If all, or even most, of my friends who left d-land had gone to the same place, I might well follow them, even though I doubt I have the brains to figure out how another site works - I still haven't really gotten this one down...

Well, I'm kind of brain-dead really. I have been for a few years, really since we made aliyah (moved to Israel). I put it down to the stress and all, but who knows? Maybe I need to get used to functioning with less brains than I was used to. It's not a really nice thought.

There is so much to write about, since I haven't been writing for a few days, and a great deal has been happening. What I wrote last time is true - I can't keep up. I am not going to try. If Hashem wants me able to write and keep up here and in email and snail mail and all, He is going to have to step in and make it happen. I'm really lucky to be staggering today, and not falling down.

Can't remember it all, but we've got a new (work) car, three baby chicks that seem likely to survive (at least two didn't make it), got a phone call from Hans and then a letter a day later, have talked to/heard from Zechy and Havva (and Jessica) all of whom are doing fine wherever they are at. I spent all Monday out of the house, *not* making it to a dr.'s appointment and then *not* getting the new car, but we did all get to see Pirates of the Caribbean the third movie at the movie theatre. So I can't rank the day a total loss.

Spent all Tuesday out of the house, too. Went to the shuk, went to the zoo, forgot to bring Neil's stuff to drop with him, Alina was sick, so the whole trip was a wash in terms of accomplishing stuff we wanted to accomplish. Hours in the horrible old car and then today John went off to work.

Home alone with the two younger kids. I actually got a couple of loads of laundry done, rescued the goats, and Simcha from the goats a couple of times, fed the chickens, got some paperwork done, watched a movie (Untamed Heart) with the kids and even managed to eat and drink not too horribly.

I am so dead. The house is in really, really horrible shape. I've been feeling lonely and miserable (more about being in physically horrible condition than anything emotional or relating to my relationships). Everything has just been too damn hard.

There is sort of a point to all of this. Today I got a letter from B'tuach Leumi. That is the national insurance ministry (like social security in the U.S., only way better). Of course I couldn't read it. In fact, I couldn't make head or tail out of it. But it had some numbers on it. Large numbers. And dates going back to when I was first awarded support by them for being crippled.

I couldn't think what it could be. They couldn't be penalizing me, asking for a return of some of the support money, could they? Not after all this time? I'm telling you, really large numbers. But then, they couldn't be giving me that much money. Whatever for? Fear. Real fear because I just don't expect letters from the gub'ment, especially with really, really large numbers on them to be good news. You know?

So many of you have probably guessed it after all this build up. It was nothing, just some accounting that they felt a need to send out to freak out us poor crips with nothing better to do than open the mail looking for time bombs.

No, I'm kidding. They gave me the money! All that money. Not enough to make me rich, or even enough to pay off my debts, even my debts only in Israel. Nothing THAT large. But still. It brings one of my bank accounts to positive numbers (!!!) and the other ends up a whole lot less negative, and I STILL have enough left over to buy a new refrigerator. I have to tell you, I've been drooling over this refrigerator. It's not the most expensive, or the best built, but it is a very nice unit, just exactly what I need, at a very good price, and our old refrigerator is in such bad shape that ants can (and do) get into it.

I'm frightened of course, that having given me this money they will now decide it was all a mistake and want it all back. So am I better off holding onto it just in case, or spending it really quickly so there's nothing they can take back? It's an interesting question. Me, I'm going for the spend it option. I suppose I can always go back into debt to the banks again, but I am keeping the refrigerator. The one I don't have yet. Yeah.

Anyone want to know WHY they gave me some large amount of money? I don't know either. I suppose someone, somewhere has a clue, but I wouldn't necessarily want to bet large money on it. Especially not this much. The rabbi's wife (who read the letter and told John what it said) either didn't know or didn't know how to tell him in simple enough Hebrew. So, there it is.

I want to phone people up and say to them "what would you do if someone just put huge sums of money (actual amount) into your bank account?" You know? Sadly, I wasn't able to get the one lady on the phone I might have enjoyed that conversation with. I'll try again tomorrow. From the new (to us) car as we are shopping, and ordering our new refrigerator.

I am really looking forward to the new refrigerator. I'm afraid I'll be disappointed just because it is so highly unlikely anything could live up to this amount of expectation. Ah, well. I guess that's a disappointment I'll have to live with. :-)

Having faith is hard. It is very hard. It is harder than hard. And when you have nothing, and the little you have is taken away, and everyone is stealing from you right and left, and you just can't see how you are going to manage but somehow you manage to limp forward another month and another month and another month, things never really getting better, and things not being able to really get worse... and then something like this happens. It doesn't restore my faith, I never lost it. It's not a reward for my faith, it doesn't work like that. But, oh, it is sweet.

Things really do always work out, somehow. And nothing lasts, not the good stuff, but also not the bad. Amazingly enough.

I was reading a diary from someone who was saying that she didn't want to play the 'who's life is worst' game because she always won hands down. Let me tell you something. She has a nice house, healthy kids, and hasn't missed any meals due to not being able to buy food. And she really believes the worst shit happens to her, worse than anybody else.

She can win the victim sweepstakes. It's okay with me. Because while to her (and many people) it's not the good stuff that counts, and the glass is always half empty (I used to be one of them), today my glass is overflowing.

And did I mention Hans is doing great. He's very happy, enjoying (!) basic training, making friends, it's just wonderful.

Zechy is doing great, although he is terribly homesick.

Havva is doing great, helping Jessica out, spending time with the babies, getting a break from life here

Simcha is doing great. She's just finished a present for an email penpal, baked us some wonderful brownies, and really is enjoying her life

Eliyahu is doing great, being a Pikatchu (sp?) in his new bright yellow swim shorts, playing with the Lego motorcycle and sidecar my sister sent him, bouncing up and down with excitement several times an hour

John is doing pretty good at work, we're getting better at the whole thing here at home, and, yes, he's pretty darn happy about the large numbers, too.

So how can it not be great?

I don't know if I ever mentioned what gave me the gift that I now see the good in my life rather than grumping about the bad...

It was many years ago. I was pregnant. The neighbour of a friend had twins, and one of them died soon after the birth. Two months later, just as the family was starting to return to something like normal, the other twin died...

My next-door neighbour's sister had a baby that died.

A good friend I'd known for years told me (I hadn't known before) about his daughter, that had been born years ago, and died at eighteen months of cancer.

I met a woman who was six months pregnant, she was in jail, and I visited her once a week. When she had the baby she went in hospital for two weeks. Then the baby went to her mother and she went back to jail.

Another woman I came to know talked about her two children, who had been taken away from her by the state

Okay, so some people might have figured it out without being hit upside the head so many times, but I can be a little slow.

It did, however, finally hit me how absolutely, supremely, sublimely lucky I am. No matter what is wrong with my life. No matter how little money I have, or that I'm only able to put a meal on the table because a neighbour gave us the food, or how much my relationship with my husband sucks or how crappy my childhood was or how few friends I have or how disabled I am...

At first, what I could see was that I had the precious, unbelievable gift of carrying a healthy baby that I could reasonably expect to be born without complications (she was), and to be able to keep (I was), and four other healthy, beautiful children. It had to be a gift, because there was no other difference between me and any of those other people - I wasn't more deserving or smarter, or more holy or more spiritual or better than any of them. Well, maybe smarter. ;-)

Anyway, that was only the beginning. Obviously if that was all I had to be grateful for, it would have been a short-lived epiphany. But no. I have so much. My kids have never missed a meal except when perhaps we were out later than expected and hadn't packed a lunch. We live in this century (or the last one) with wonderful things like antibiotics and vaccinations and computers and cell phones. And iPods (I had one, once). I have a good, solid roof over my head, more than one set of clothes, well, you've heard me go on. I lived in the country with the highest standard of living in the world, and I wasn't at the bottom either. We had money enough for luxuries and values that kept us close. I start on like this and it is hard to stop.

The thing is, I want to share it with other people. Crazy as it is. I want to take this woman who is winning the victim sweepstakes (in her mind) and shake her until some of the crud in her head comes loose. I want her to see how lucky she is, I want her to appreciate all the good things in her life, I want her to be happy. I want everyone to share in what I've found.

It makes me sound rather like some kind of whacko, testifying in a revival tent (no insult intended towards NON-whackos who testify, please understand). So I try not to go on about it too much. Which is hard because I really, really want other people to be able to feel the way I feel, to be able to be happy, and see the good.

Which is very hard. I'm sure I mentioned, faith is very hard. Sometimes the good which is right in front doesn't feel so very good. Even when I know it's good.

THIS good, however, the large, large numbers that showed up in my life today - it feels good. *very big WIDE grin*

And now everyone who isn't completely sickened should remember to come back tomorrow when I can whine and wail about everything that went wrong, and how awful I feel, some more.

'Cause it's still hard.

I'm listening to all this positive, uppy feeling stuff which more than ten years ago I would have sneered at and turned away in disgust, pouring out of me all over the place. Oy.

0 bleats so far

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06