2007_04_17

Abba Haidschi bumbaidschi

updated: 2009_12_01

Abba Haidschi bumbaidschi schlof lange,
Es isch ja dei Mutter ausgange,
Sie isch ja ausgange Und kummt lang net hoim,
Und läßt des kloi Büable alloi net dahoim.
Abba Haidschi bumbaidschi,
Bum, bum, bum, bum,
Abba Haidschi bumbaidschi, bum bum.



Abba Haidschi bumbaidschi schlaf süeße,
Die Engele lasse di grüeße,
Sie lasse di grüeße und lasset di frage,
Ob sie des kloi Büeble umanander sollet trage.
Abba . . . .



Aber Haidschi Bumbaidschi, in Himm'l
Da faehrt di a schneeweißer Schimm'l,
Drauf sitzt a klois Engle mit oiner Latern,
Drein leicht vom Himmel der allerschenst Stern,
Abba . . . .



Und der Haidschi bumbaidschi is komma,
Und der hot mer mei Büeble mitgnomma,
Und er hot mir's mitgnomma
Und hot's nimme bracht,
Drum wünsch i meim Büeble a recht guete Nacht.
Abba . . . .

Synchronicity on December 1, 2009

I use to record a sequence of songs, which I need to rehearse, on my Digital Recorder.
Then, on my way and climb to the pool and back, twice a day (if I am in Arad), I learn.
Today, after I had worked on MY DESIRE TODAY - strongly thinking of my brother,
I, one last time, listened to a song, which to re-learn took me 3 days.
It begins: "If the day fell upon you, if something terrible happened!"

Then I moved on to this sad lullaby, which I like, but which is not suitable as a lullaby .
'I must make a new text to it', I thought, while climbing down the Wadi of Compassion.
But the closer I came to the pool, and then inside the Jacuzzi, great grief overcame me!
Wasn't this lullaby a metaphor for my story with my brother? - tears came to my eyes!

When he was little, I used to carry him on my back to make him laugh.
When he visited me for the last time, and we went to swim in the Sea,
he heaved ME on HIS shoulders and faked to drown us both together.

Suddenly I understood the paradox of the two lines:
"She has gone out and will not come home for a long time,
and doesn't leave her little boy alone at home":
How gentle is this roundabout manner of stating the fact:
The mother can go out and not come home for a long time,
for at home there no longer is a little boy needing her care!
In heaven a white horse is riding him,
a little angel sitting there with a lantern
The "Haidschi bumbaidschi" who in the first line is the little boy himself,
in the last stanza
has become the one who took the child away and never brought it back.

With Eberhard in my mother's garden, Boeblingen 1963.

My little boy is alive and will soon be 47 years old.
while my little-big brother left us at the age of 27
This was the only experience of death in my life -
how blessed am I !!!-
which made me feel, as mourning people say,
"that the world will never be the same"!

This morning, when my eyes were turned to the painting above my bed,
I pondered once again
about this threefold deadly entanglement with American soldiers:
Three years after my father's death, we were informed,
that he was killed on August 5, 1943, 10 days before my 5th birthday
during the invasion of the Allied Forces into Sicily/Italy.
It must have been an American soldier,
who helped my father to leave this plane.

The driver, who killed my brother, was a drunken American soldier,
from a base close to my brother's town, Schwaebish Hall.
I visited this base, when I flew to Germany for the funeral.
"I don't want to think of you as of the murderer of my brother",
I said to the meek man, who later got himself killed in Vietnam.

When I was ten years old,
my mother used to send me to the market in town,
to buy vegetables and fruits as cheaply as possible.
It was a long way, walking and riding the tramway.
One day I saw the tram arrive and ran to reach it,
trying to cross a street without looking left.
Had I done so one tenth of a second earlier,
I would have been overrun by a big car.
But I only collided with the right fender
and flew about 15 meters through the air.
A shocked American officer checked me.
The child was alive and not even wounded,
except for what soon would be "blue spots"
on the outside of my left hips and thighs.
He drove me home and gave me chocolate.
When he was gone, my mother decided,
that I was still able to go to the market...

What was extremely teaching
for me,
in addition to the fun of dancing,
[and dancing with
my granddaughter (see below) !]
was Levi's easiness.
Each of the performances
were practiced
- by parents and children
who didn't know each other-
just for a minute or so,
and then it was already filmed.
Far from perfectionism!

And when once a mother asked:
"Should this step be
to the right or to the left?"
he said simply:
"For children it doesn't matter,
- right or left!"

This really hit me!
It's so similar to Mika's ease:
A week later,
when I wanted her to remember
the 28 imaginations
of "good night dreams",
and she couldn't, nor could I,
she simply said:
"Then let us invent new dreams,
whenever we cannot remember
what I imagined last night!"

And also Tomer,
when he shared with me
his new interest in
"psychodellic music",
and kept pronouncing
"psychodallic",
I kept correcting him.
Finally he said:
"In Hebrew you cannot know,
how it's pronounced,
since I'm talking Hebrew,
it's alright,
that I say "psychodallic",
and he went one
pronouncing it like that.
"You'll never get it done,
and you can never get it wrong",
says "Abraham"....

This time it's me,
whose feet are caught in the air,
just like I caught Levi in the air
during that dance activation
in a religious school in March