A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [23]
Then he says after Passover I’ll bring you a surprise from the city and that makes my crying stop. I love that word—surprise. I wonder what it will be. I’m not really allowed to have anything that’s just mine but if Daddy buys it for me it isn’t my fault.
Baby Diary
July 12
The rash is worse. It’s spread to her entire face. I put on cod liver oil. Today she really smiled at me when I spoke to her.
Dori
It’s Passover today. Shoshana brings us white shirts and clean shorts. I’m hoping she’ll give me shorts with a big zipper on the side and she does.
We go to the fields with all the children and all the adults. There’s a tractor decorated with flowers and the bigger children sing in a choir. Some people get up and dance to Stalks in the Field. Someone reads a poem about figs. Everyone is happy.
Daddy is sitting on the ground smiling. I sit on his lap. There’s a speech about peace with the Arabs. I remember what I wanted to ask Daddy. It’s about the toilets in Gush Halav. But he wants to hear the speech so he whispers tell me after.
Suddenly it’s way past suppertime and the adults have to go to the Dining Hall to read the Haggada35 and eat and we have to go to the Children’s House. At least we were together almost the whole day.
Poem About Figs
Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone
The flowers appear on the earth
The time of the singing of birds is come
And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land
The fig tree puts forth its green figs
And the vines are in blossom; they give forth their fragrance
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away
My dove is in the clefts of the rock
In the secret places of the hills
Let me see thy face
Let me hear thy voice
For sweet is thy voice
And thy face is comely
Take us the foxes, the little foxes
That spoil the vineyards
For our vineyards are in blossom
My beloved is mine and I am his
He feedeth among the lilies
Until the sun spreads, and the shadows flee away
Turn my beloved
And be thou like a roe or a young hart
Upon the distant mountains.
Dori
Marx is famous for saying share everything. I don’t know why that made him famous. Everyone already knows it’s more fair if you share.
I remember to ask Daddy about the toilets in Gush Halav. I say David says they go in holes in the ground. Daddy really really doesn’t want to talk about this topic. He says I don’t know but how can that be? I say but do they have toilets? and he says they don’t have plumbing like we have.
I say why don’t we give them half our toilets? For example we have two toilets in the Children’s House. We could give one to Jish.
He says our country doesn’t have enough money right now but as soon as we have more everyone will have plumbing. I ask how can we get more money and he says we have to work hard.
I’m glad I’m only a child. I don’t want to work all day. I might be a little bit lazy. Shoshana likes to sing that song to us when she wakes us up in the morning—
Get up lazybones
And off you go to work
Get up lazybones
And off you go to work
Cuku-Riku Cuku-Riku
Hear the rooster crow
Cuku-Riku Cuku-Riku
Hear the rooster crow
in that mean laughing voice of hers. If Shoshana thinks it’s bad to be lazy it can’t be that bad.
Our First Year
3 February 1949. The snow is beginning to melt and living conditions are really tough. Just to get in and out of bed, to keep clean, to drain the water out of the room, to shuffle from one meal to the next, to say nothing of putting in an eight- or nine-hour work day—in other words, just to go through the simple process of keeping alive during the twenty-four hour day saps all of one’s energy.
Cultural activities are almost impossible, but we try, we try. Now preparing a skit for the celebration when the folks from Kibbutz Shaar Hagolan arrive. Those of us who used to whine that the days of pioneering are over in Israel have stopped whining.
Dori
I’m in love with Tarzan.