How fitting is the song of this page for the feelings which flooded me ever so often during these days.
Nothing big, nothing dramatic, nothing catastrophic - nothing but under-under-undertones around me,
and the projection of my fear, that something was expected from me, and that I would fail my loved-ones..

The day passes and I don't know how, for nothing is documented on my camera...
I was a lot with Mika, which gave Efrat time to be with Meirav, but was this good?

................

And again it's time for dinner, but this time it's the Eve of Shabbat and the last candle of Chanuka

We light candles, we sing, but who are we? Not the seven who had dinner together. The boys went to see a horror-movie on Tomer's new computer in his room. ........ Meirav sits on the sofa with her labtop and watches the "Big Brother" show, which is her occupation, whenever Efrat is not talking to her. I feel compassion for the extreme distress which that addiction is meant to cover, but I also feel triggered by this segregation. The more so as I sense and know that my son is triggered, too. What about Efrat and Mika? I don't know. Nor does anyone say a word. We "play" it "peaceful and calm". And my fear of tomorrow deepens.

While still sitting around the candle-table in the living-room, Efrat prepares Mika for sleep

This is one of the images, which make me imagine Mika clearly at the age of eighteen.
In what World shall will live in 2023????

Shabbat, December 19,
though Mika was born on December 20, for her today is her birthday.

Imma asks us to put Mika's room in order.
I start alone with the books, then Mika helps me with her uncountable dolls and pets.
While the princess tries out crown and scepter, Imma says something that triggers her...

We are already seven persons in the house,
Mika, her parents, her brother + grandma, Meirav and Din.
But Mika asks again and again: "When are the guests coming?"
[I wonder, if towards the evening she still remembered this impatience...]

While waiting for the first guests to arrive - sister Elah, brother Alon with girlfriend Dana,
I suggest to take Mika out ---- for her own sake, for my sake and for her parents' sake.

This hour was the easiest and the best of this intense and tense day....

We take the chalk colors, and go to the place, where we recently began to draw on flagstones. At first I only watch her, but she wants me to draw, too. So I draw a little girl in blue. She likes it and adds yellow arms and legs. "But look", I say, "she hasn't got any hair!" So Mika chooses white chalk and draws. "Now she has white hair like you, grandma!"

When we were done with drawing, she wanted to fetch the bicycle.
"Remember, how I drove with Abba on the bicycle on Yom Kippur?"
But her fitness is limited, we hardly made it to the next playground.

As usual, instead of gliding down the tunnel chute, she wants to climb on its top. Climbing and jumping is her delight. And, of course, swinging high and endlessly. "Faster , grandma, faster!" And again, when I let her go too high, the arrow through my bladder warns me.. At first, two of her kindergarden mates were there, too, then we were alone and I had time to discern that tree with its autumn-leaves. "See the two trees over there, Mika? One, green, is a tamarisk, the other one with the colored leaves we met in that other park, I don't know its name, but see how pretty it is!" She enjoyed it too. Looking around, we saw two more specimens of this tree, which in our climate is special.

Efrat calls us: "Elah and Alon have arrived."
So we go home,
with the bicycle more carried by me, than driven by Mika

The two sisters...

At 4 o'clock nobody appears,
while Elah has to leave already at 4:10

Whom is Efrat photographing outside? It's rare that she picks up the camera!
Whom is Alon - with Tomer, Dana and Ronnit around him - photographing inside?

The princess puts out the flames on her cake,
and her family is happy with her:
Yael-Itamar-Din-Immanuel (behind him Uri), Rafi, Hagar, Rafi's wife and Dita's daughter.