  
            After four weeks of separation - Mika was truly 
            welcoming me from the first moment. 
            She even wanted to return to an activity, which we engaged in when 
            she was much smaller: 
            checking out the many bits and pieces in "our" drawer with 
            its little boxes, like this pretty one. 
            But before immersed in these old "things" deeper, she remembered 
            our new common creation: 
            The candle-holders which I had formed in the "Creation-Circle" 
            had been painted by Mika and Abba, 
            and after they had been burnt in the oven again, Mika brought them 
            home for both of us to enjoy them. 
          
          
             
               
                  I also made 2 triangles to hold one candle 
                  for Shoham and one candle for Arad | 
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          But Mika requested both candleholders for Shoham and 
            arranged them about the "snow-man" of Abba above the triangle-stone, 
            which I had found for her 2 months ago and suggested that she paint 
            it for Abba's birthday in January 
          
          
          
             
               
                   
                    We invented ever new arrangements 
                    and, of course, Mika also arranged herself, 
                    preferably with a finger or two fingers on her nose! 
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    Finally I positioned the candles 
                    and the snow-man above 
                    and the stone triangle below 
                    the two certificates of  
                    "EXCELLENCE", 
                    which Tomer had received recently 
                    from his boarding-school! 
                    What a change! What a joy! 
                    A pity, he wasn't with us 
                    to let our candle-exhibition 
                    celebrate him! 
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                  A glimpse of the couple in the kitchen 
                  - while Immanuel, before his flight,  
                  prepares dinner, and - for the days of his absence - a delicious 
                  soup for his girls .
                   At the same time, Mika trains to make "puree" 
                  in "our" room, with plastelina. | 
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              "Why 
                  was it, that you - the only one among ten grandkids, 
                  didn't like grandma's specialy: potato-puree?" I 
                  asked her. 
                  She obviously felt challenged by this, and not only wanted to 
                  try and eat it,  
                  but to prepare it herself. 
                  Abba, in the kitchen, didn't find the potato-crusher,
                  "nor do I want, that you use it with 
                  this plastelina",
                  but later came Imma in and she did find 
                  it and did allow it...
                  "I use to spread fried onions on 
                  it!" I taught Mika , but she 
                  objected:
                  "No! You topped it with tomato pieces!" 
                  and used colored pens instead.
                  3 days later we made a real puree and she 
                  even tried to peel a potato!
                  "You are really good at it! Next 
                  year you'll invite the entire family to puree!"
                    
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          Back to the evening of Abba's flight. 
            Continuing with her "nostalgic" trip,  
            Mika remembered how I had once set up a tent in the middle of "our" 
            room. 
            It's not easy to find a perspective for documenting the tent game. 
            But have a look at the fat Hebrew dictionary underneath the "puree", 
            for it will play a part in another game , two days later. 
           
          
          Soon we are called to dinner, and after Mika's 
          shower and teeth brushing there is "Time 
          to say Good-Bye"...
          
            
          
          
          
          
          
          
          On the closet appear co-creations of Mika with 
            Savta or with Abba (autumn-leaves!) 
            "Our" room is, where I sleep, create on my computer, and 
            have stored a few things. 
            The chest was once acquired, secondhand, for "my" room, 
            for placing a TV-set on it. 
            But in this flat, there is no connection to TV, and I said, that I 
            wouldn't need it anyway. 
            That's how the chest became Mika's drawing-desk even when I'm not 
            there with her. 
             
            2 days later an ingenuitive "house" was built, with my tray 
            upside down as a roof, 
            with my pen-container as a chimney, with autumn-leaves dried in that 
            dictionary, 
            and best of all - with a fence made of the tiny 
            oranges, we had picked (see later). 
              
           
           
           
          Thursday, February 11, 2010 
            I was fed up with the fact, that - except 
            for my song - my birthday gifts were a fiasco. 
            Not only did the "digital sun-system" and even the globe 
            overstrain Mika's imagination, 
            -the sun-system was primitive junk and the globe-balloon didn't fit 
            into its metal curve. 
            Since I loathe shopping, even supermarkets (and 
            prefer to spend a bit more money in a grocery) 
            I had been glad, when Efrat suggested to buy my sun-system according 
            to a brochure. 
            This could be done only in Naharia, but even the globe in Shoham was 
            bought by her.  
             
            I wanted to at least find another globe, after all I had bought one 
            for Amit's 5th birthday 
            (my landlady had been pregnant with Amit, when 
            I came to settle in Arad in her house). 
            But that was in Arad! 
             
            In Shoham the weather was so warm that we had ice-cream, the three 
            of us together, 
            but though  the woman in the shop,  who was on good terms 
            with Efrat,  advised me, 
            to go to her neighbor, where the balloon could be blown up by a machine, 
            it didn't fit. 
            The woman returned the money for the flawed product, but no globe 
            was to be found. 
             
            I still wonder, what this means...  
          
             
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