New Page-----New Day

I need a new passion. Since I now realize that moving to Israel is not a viable idea,I have to find another cause.Right now, I feel drained of passion. I'm taking suggestions !

Maybe I was focused only on one thing, the excitement of being in a country that is still new, by our standards. There would be so many challenges to living there.I found that I really don't want to attack those challenges. They are not out of my comfort zone, they are just harder than I want to do. Maybe I wasn't ardent enough.Maybe I am too pragmatic. Maybe I am just me. I want an adventure, but I want my car,my condo, my friends,my doctors,my dishes,my dog,my kids a few states away.I don't think that's too unreasonable. So, I'll just look for another thing to be passionate about. It's never too late to put a new challenge on my plate. Now to think of what I want it to be.

Honeymoon is over. I'm fully engaged and back in the groove. After a month of no phone calls, no mail,only emails, I now have a full calendar and many phone messages to which to reply. It's wonderful. I missed being in the loop. I still need to catch up on small details of what everyone has been doing, but I am getting there.My iPad is tired. I used it a lot for my Kindle and for playing solitaire ! 

Life is good. It's never too late to appreciate this. I think I'll stick around and see what's next.

I think that my ipad does not like me anymore. I suspected that in Jerusalem. It does strange things that I can not explain. I am considering going to the Apple store to check it out. I usually go to my fav store, Best Buy, but I think this may be more serious. I also suspect that this is Apple's way for getting me to upgrade.

I may only need a Grandchild to fix my problem, but I don't expect one to visit for a few more weeks. Who ever knew that Grandchildren could be so valuable. Early on, I thought that we only had to love them and give appropriate gifts, but now I really see the value of having children. They give us the greatest gift.. grandchildren.

My life experiences do not include  electronics. I am easily impressed by friends who can work out a problem on their computers. I am happy when I can press "print" and it prints. I just have to accept my limitations. It's never too late to not be embarrased when I have to ask my 10 year old grandson for technical help. I can always teach him how to iron a dress shirt when he goes for his first job interview.

I had a few minutes to spare, so I did a search on my ancestral home in New Orleans. 5820 Hurst St. There were two listings and I did both. Only one was correct and now I can't remember which one it was. But , the place looked wonderful. After 61 years, it looks even better than when we lived tere. Some things just age better than others. I need to go back to N.O. I have a yearning for the wonderful food. Maybe after I recover from this past trip, I will think seriously about a foodie trip. The problem is, what to do when you are not eating and... how many meals can you eat in one day. For a Floridian to go on an alligator excursion is nothing you want to do. A trip to the bayou might be fun . A trip to museums is just OK. Anti bellum home tours are , once you have seen one, why do more. Battle fields..maybe. A trip on the steam paddle boat is Ok for an hour.A ride on the street car can be tedious. But the eating. That's what it is all about. Maybe I am jaded, but after seeing my old neighborhood, but knowing that there is nobody there who remembers the Hirsch's, I'd just go for the food.

It's never too late to remind yourself that you can go back, but only in your memories.

I was thinking about my Grandmother. I hear some really heartfelt tributes to Jewish Bubbies, but I didn't have that kind of experience. Maybe that is why I tell each of my Grandchildren that I love them the best of all. My Grandmother never spoke to me. I never got a kiss, or a smack, or a hug. Then again, except for the smacks, I didn't get much of the kisses and hugs. That's just the way it was. I do remember my Grandma making strudle. Her two daughters, my Mother and Aunt Goldie, plus my sister along with Grandma, pulling the dough so thin and large, that it hung over the kitchen table. I know she did something after that because I remember the strudle, but I don't have a memory of the rest of the operation. The stove was on four legs and that's as far as I remember. Some day I want to be hypnotized to see if I can pull up any more family moments. There were three things that my Grandmother made, according to my memory. Cherry wine,strudle and sour chicken soup. I could live on that. It's never too late to wonder where these memories hang out, only to come forward when you least expect them. Sure wish I had a peice of that strudle right now.

I wanted to experience what it was like for a whole country to just stop on Shabbat . Period. No drugstore opened. No cafe opened. Just the world ,there, stops. It was nice. It was a little scary because I am not used to a forced stoppage. At one point, when I took a walk to the very expensive Mamilla mall and found every thing shut tight, My thought was that these stores are loosing a lot of revenue. So American. Just like everyone is Irish on St Patrick's Day, in Israel, everyone is a practicing Jew on Shabbat. It is a day of rest. Take it because you can't leave it. It is written in stone.

I think that I like to have my choice of taking that day ,or not. If it works for me, I'll take it, but if I need or want to do something, I like the option. Not terribly observant of me, but I still like choices. I choose to be Jewish. But I also think that Judaism gives you choices.. and my choice is to do what feels good for me.It's never too late to always do what feels right .

OK. Now I am back. After a week of saying,"last week at this time we were...",I am now in the present. It happened by our going to Shabbat services. I found that coming home was the high light of our trip. It felt really good to have people welcome me home. Now, I think that is what makes people choose to go on vacations. It's the coming home that makes it special.

Next week at this time, I can say,"last week at this time I was at services and it was so good to be back."

I did find a new diet that really works. Travel to Jerusalem and walk those hills every time you left the apartment. Or came back to the apartment. I can guarentee that you will lose weight.

It's never too late ..for anything.

We are almost back to "normal". Bob has forgotten, in a month, how to make his every other day oat meal and his coffee skills have slipped. I'm not sure if I should be concerned or just have a tutorial for him. I will go into denial mode and just see what developes. I went to my first violin lesson in 5 weeks. I looked at the sheet music and went blank. Seems that I forgot a lot in a month, also. But my teacher is a pro and starting with "happy Birthday", I started remembering my fingering and the corresponding notes.

Someone reminded me that it is never too late to change my mind and that is what I don't mind doing. Life is too short when you are 80 to linger on being locked in to something that isn't right for you. I tried Israel, although in a superficial way, and I found it not to be the life changing jolt that I felt comfortable with. I want to be with my family of choice, my supportive friends and here in the place that I recreated myself to be a better person. (I hope ) It's never too late to just be.

There is nothing that smells as good as Bacon. If you have gone from eating treaf to keeping Kosher, the smell of bacon will rekindle the desire to go back to your old eating habits. Until I was 10, I lived in a Kosher home. My Grandmother was so Kosher , that when she went to the hospital, we brought her food three times a day. That involved taking a street car to get to Touro Hospital.Then a return street car, carrying the empty containers, that could only be washed at home.  Jews went to Touro, not to the "other" hospital. N.O. had three hospitals in those days, Touro, Baptiste and Charity. No Kosher kitchen at the hospital in those days, and no frozen, Rabbi certified K meals, either.

We still joke, but it is true..Grandma went out and the ham came in. A friend of my parents was in the military and he would go to the PX and buy us a ham. There was meat rationing then and that ham was a prize gift. That secret ingredient in red beans and rice still makes my mouth water.

Some people crave sweets, give me a BLT and I am happy. Maybe it is the salt in the ham or bacon that I crave, but either way, it is good eating. I don't think that I would be disciplinded enough to stick to a Kosher diet. One smell of that bacon frying and I'd be the first at the table.Such weakness. It's never too late to declare my love of bacon. Sorry Grandma Beller.

I've done the important things since we have returned from Israel. Cricket got groomed, Bob got a haircut and today, I had my hair "done", Now I can relax and get onto a project. I was thinking about learning more about dementia. That's in line with taking on "world peace". I've heard that hypertension is the silent killer. I'd like to recommend dementia as the silent killer. It takes down the person with it and the person who is the caretaker. Only you don't hear about the double whammy, too much. Call it "old timers disease",as my mother pronounced it, dementia, or more classy"mild cognitive impairment", it is a downer. Why are so many people being diagnosed with this disease? When I forget something, am I slipping into the disease. Is it a disease? Can I have a shot to avoid it. I need to get smarter about this. Once Bob wrote a story called"World on my Doorstep", which I reread and love. Maybe this disease is on my doorstep and the ending isn't so predictable. It's never too late , but maybe it is.

I'll say it again..it is so nice to be home in Paradise. Our friends, our neighbors, our dog walking friends...you all are the most important reason for us to be here. More and more, I can understand how our relatives did not want to leave what they knew as being familier.How they couldn't see leaving what they worked hard to accumulate,how they felt part of their country. All understandable as I get older and hold dearer accumulated "stuff". Maybe not such a smart thing, but I do understand..now.

We read some good books over the 4 weeks that we were in Israel. I bought, at a book store in Mamilla Mall, the fatest book that I could find, that was written in English. Bill Bryson's "One Summer in America  1927". Attempting to fly across the Atlantic,Charles Lindberg, Babe Ruth, segregation,antisemitism,Prohibition, Al Capone, the start of the financial fall of the stock market, a President who only worked four hours a day. Good reading.

Then I read,"Four Funerals and a Wedding " by Jill Smolowe. You lose the love of your life,your husband, your mother in law , your mother and your sister, but life goes on and a wedding afirms this. You don't forget the love, but you celebrate life by moving on.

Then, a book I had no reason to think I would read, but did,is "Salt-A world history" by Mark Kurlansky. If you thought that oil makes the world go round, it's salt. The word salary and soldier comes from the word salt. This just gives a hint of the importance of salt. Not all of our time in Israel was spent eating and sitting in the park. We did try to exerise our grey cells. Some of us more than others.

it's never too late to still appreciate that I learned how to read at an early age.

We are home. And I do not know what happened to March 1. It is so good to get home. Today, I spent all day finding things that I had put away in safe places. I found everything.

Cricket was so happy to have me home. I understand that the family that took care of her,Lucky's parents, want to change her name to Golda, as in Golda Meir. I'll have to think about that one.

This short note is to let everyone know that we are home safely and for the record, I don't, want to go any place else. Home e is in Venice.