InteGRATion into GRATeFULLness
Singing&Sounding keeps me Sound

We have brought peace upon you

2007_07_23

Israeli Folksong This is one of the first songs, learnt by every student of Hebrew, Zionism and Israel and every new immigrant who is fortunate enough to learn in an Ulpan . "Therefore" no Israeli, born and raised in Israel would ever sing such a naive song. I do keep singing it!

to former song to next song

2010 - Mika's and My Heaven-on-Earth - last page

A very small birthday celebration at home, on Saturday Evening, Dec. 18. 2010, before Immanuel's flight to Los Angeles

The Song of the Micas

I asked Elah, Mika's stepsister to write the song on the cardboard of one of the 35 gifts. [details about the song on the page of Mika's birthday songs ]

Elah had to be driven to Tel-Aviv before the celebration. Instead of her - Tzilla, the neighbor took part,
and it was her, who was so moved by the song, that she had tears in her eyes - tears that comforted me.
Mika was interested in one thing only : in the torte, which Tzilla had made, since Abba had had no time.

Efrat says that the Mica sheets would break "they should be arranged under glass like a painting!" but Mika - overstimulated - is not interested. My son shows her, how he would fly tonight from Israel through Canada to Los Angeles. But Mika - overstimulated - is not interested.

After Mika has swallowed the cake - as much as her mother allowed her to - she consented to pose with blowing out the candle.
No singing (Efrat to Immanuel: "what are you playing with your guitar?", "just for the atmosphere!") except by force: the song of last year's birthday.
Not even a nice costume [like on that party...] and a proper hair-dress, but pyjamas
- even candle and candle-holder were brought by me from "our drawer with stuff"-
how pityful, how pathetic...
The comparison with the grand party the day before can only be tolarated by me,
if I see this as a sign - together with the pounding signs of the days that followed -
that there is, indeed, the end of a period in sight,
the period of 23 years of grandmotherhood....
[see more in Learn&Live 12 till Learn&Live 15]

SICKNESS...

When my son parted from his wife at 11PM, the black wave came rolling over us.
He and I had dreaded it, and no "good-feeling-thoughts" were helpful in the end.
The tension and stress had been too terrible, or was it our fear that attracted it?
.......................................
Immanuel left with a cold, Efrat developed frightening symptoms, and Mika's fever rose to 40,6

The next morning I accompanied Efrat and Mika to the clinic, first to one doctor, than to another doctor
(also for the sake of  m y  coughing, which I had no longer been able to keep secret and under control)

I took comfort in Van Gogh's painting, which hang next to the map of Shoham, on one side,
and next to info about the procedure of visiting doctors, on the other side

Despite Mika's high fever all through the night and most of the day,
she wanted to celebrate yet another birthday, this time with 2 other children in the kindergarden itself.
To have the "full" documentation of this crazy ongoing festival of birthdays (the fourth one will be on Dec. 24 with her mother's parents)
I made her stand next to the cake (though I hate when she poses), before her mother - also very sick - took her by car to the kindergarden.

On this Monday, Mika's actual day of birth, December 20,
there was nothing cheerful or "interesting" to document,
except for these two photos, in a moment of calm:

After 2 minutes of having painted her lips, Mika said: "What else can you do with a lipstick?" Indeed, what else????? She tried to put nail polish on her nails, but after the first nail she got irritated by the fact, that her hands felt sticky. She ran to the bathroom. "But, Mika, be quiet, let Imma sleep, she is sick!" That did it for Mika, she left lipstick and nail polish and turned to something else. What? I don't remember, or perhaps it was already then, that Mika asked me politely to leave the room, as she has done often before. But when her room was also my room, it was more difficult to send me away. This sounds like grandmother-ego, but the problem was different then. Her mother sent double messages, to her as well as to me: She wanted me to take care of Mika, but she also wanted me to leave her alone. As painful as it is, I need to tell the last story: The story with the apple-pieces - from MY point of view:

Time and again I tried to prevent Mika from enterering her mother's bedroom: Once I entered behind her and heard: "Mika, do you want an apple?" "Yes!" No quest to me came from Efrat, so I asked: "Do you want me to cut her an apple?" "Yes!" I climbed down and prepared a plate, artfully placing on it half an apple in small pieces and half an apple in two quarters, out of fear, that Mika might complain about either device. My fear attracted a formidable trigger... I climbed up and presented the plate. Of course, Mika said: "Why did you......!" "Because sometimes you want the apples cut small and sometimes big. But if today you want only small pieces, eat these and tell me and I'll cut the quarters." I would have stayed, if she had allowed it... Suddenly I heard her calling from above: "Savta, Imma says, you should cut me the apple in small pieces". This did it for me. As I said, I cared so much, that Efrat would get her peace and quiet. Mika now became the mediator of asuras: I became terribly triggered. Couldn't she have just told me to cut the apples as I had suggested? But no, she needed to involve her mother, so she could prove to me that Imma was on her side I don't remember, how it started: I exhorted Mika quietly. Still, her mother heard this and became crazy with fury. It was then, that I - just for one moment - lost my control and also screamed something, just one thing - out of my great confusion: my utmost endeavor to guard Efrat's peace and my tolerance with Mika who ruined it. But now for Efrat "everything" was over - and is over till this day, Dec. 26, 2010.

End of the sequence of "Mika's and my Heaven-on-Earth"

The last time that Mika addressed me, was in the morning of Dec. 21, when I was allowed to give her her cereals.
Sitting opposite her at the huge dinner-table - as usual, when I guard her dispersed eating - she suddenly said:
"You and Imma were quarrelling yesterday. It was crazy.But people cannot get crazy (le-hishtage'a), right?"
"Yes they can! All of us sometimes get crazy - out of fury."
I wanted to add: "But it was because of you, Mika, what happened", but she shut my mouth and turned elsewhere.

It is Sunday, December 26, 2010, Arad.
I've completed this last sequence
and I'm stunned, how much pain, shame and powerlessness floods me.
Rifts like this have happened with Efrat before,
though not many in all these 4 years (which started on Dec. 29, 2006),
but when I now re-read my computer diary of Dec. 26, 2006, I wonder,
if I've learnt my lessons - of letting go of righteousness
and of superhuman endeavor to please people.
And that other lesson, that came through Mika:
that not only she has to learn to share her pain,
[see the story Efrat told me in the morning of that 'celebration']
also her mother and her grandmother have to learn,
to ask for each others' support, when there is pain,
instead of swallowing it
out of fear to trigger the other,
by causing her to feel guilty.

[See much more about my process of integration in Learn&Live 15]

The song "Mika", sung by Ephraim Shamir,
which gave Mika her name
may bridge between
"Mika's Heaven on Earth",
a sequence which shows 16 months of Mika's life with me, her grandmother,
inserted on most of the pages between SongGame 2007_01_01 till 2007_07_23

Appendix to this last page:
A "trailer" of the last 8 months: a selection of Immanuel's photos

"Documentation of my - now rarer - encounters with Mika"
since January 29, 2011 , inserted since SongGame 2007_08_01
[bio-context: Learn&Live 16, same date]