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Biographical Sculptures
GRAND MOTHER HOOD
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Tomer - Towards Completion?
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2003_04_06; last update: 2003_05_31
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A day after the end of Sadaam
Hussein, 3 days before we parted,
Tomer, Alon and Daddy visited Tamir in my former mobile home. On January 1, 2003, it was me, who took the boys to Tamir, on a car-less, strenuous, adventure to his place near the sea. We slept and ate in the bus and made necklaces with sea-shells 
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And then came the time for parting
2003_04_17
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But in time I dared to take his hand all the way from
school to pool.
Still later he suddenly suprised me:
"I want my hand to be held!"
This was on my Titorah path, which is not at all
convenient for walking side by side.
From then on I took his hand, whenever possible, and he entrusted it to me
willingly.
Our last togetherness
was to be at his aunt's birthday.
While Immanuel, his 3 kids and I were on our way,
Tomer was unusually silent and sad.
He must have felt the heaviness of the situation,
not only because he was asked to part from his mother and siblings,
but because he would join his father at the most untimely moment.
But soon he returned to his happy self.
When Tomer and I had been at "Succah
in the Desert" for the
closure of the desert peace-process,
there were 9 puppies in Avi's little animal farm and Tomer desperately desired
to take one home.
I wonder if - while playing with this puppy of Dita's daughter Hagar - Tomer
was aware,
how sensible it was, that this time too his mother, at whom he raged so badly,
had refused.
He couldn't have taken a dog to an American flat, which his father had been
asked to leave.
Ruth came to fetch Tomer in order to
spend the last 36 hours with him,
before his father would take him to his insecure home in US- Michigan.
These last photos, taken by Immanuel at his half-sister Dita's birthday,
compose a triptych that signifies my transistion to a life without Tomer.
Tomer and I are searching for his "Lucky
Stone" on Dita's lawn.
Tomer is called to pose for a picture with his mother and siblings,
while half-visible grandma crouches apart, facing another direction.
Tomer finds his stone elsewhere, but I discover Alon's ~ lost keys!
On his way to his mother's car, he said "Bye"
- carelessly.
I once more opposed the usage of this senseless greeting:
"Remember, Tomer, that I refuse to be dragged into this.
What word can be more beautiful than our own greeting:
We say 'shalom', when we meet,
we say 'shalom', when we part,
and in between we ask each other:
'what is your shalom' [=' how are you'].
Everyone in Israel nowadays has forsaken this blessing.
Tomer would have felt embarrassed to be an exception.
When he was seated in the car behind a closed window,
I pretended to write "Shalom" on the outside of the glass.
He moved his finger to write it on the same spot - inside!
At the same time he must have said something to Ruth,
for I heard her saying: "But I did say 'Bye'!"
meaning me.
"That's not the same!" he said
with a grownup voice.
These were the last words I heard from my pupil/teacher.
And together with the ballgame we played exactly before,
this parting left me fulfilled with a feeling of wholeness, of
SHALOM.
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And I feel this whenever my eyes pass our threefold finding, which is like a treasure he bequeathed me with to nourish me. On the day I took him to complete the peace process in Succah in the Desert, we deviated from Beersheba and first traveled from there for 2 1/2 bus hours to the SaltSea. For 2 years I had wanted to bring him there, but now that I showed him my pond, my springs, my shore, my place was in a mess, and Tomer soon asked: "When are we leaving?" He saw, that I was very triggered , and he did everything to appease me. Until he said finally and firmly : "I want to climb down to the Sea after all." I was surprised, unbelieving, but guided him gladly down the tricky slope. There he put one foot in front of the other, juggling on the slippery stones. Suddenly he stooped and lifted something incredibly beautiful: a chalice formed of mud and salt, not round, not eliptic, but wave-like, and a moment after he stooped again, picking up a big, black, shining pebble. We placed it tenderly in the middle of the chalice - like a precious jewel. Just one moment after that it was me who found something extraordinary, a little mat woven of some reed-like material, woven by whom? by sand, by salt, by water? |
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Whenever my eyes pass our threefold finding....
3 days later I see my beloved acrobat on faraway suburban asphalt:
September 30, 2009
Since then Tomer has changed flats once a year,
or - when he was moved to his mother in 2004 -,
and again - when he moved to his father in 2009,
even twice a year.
Now he has - for the first time - added beauty to his room ,
at his father's -- in
yet another new flat -- again at Shoham.
Immanuel had finally discarded this table with its
long history, loaden with emotions for me:
After 3 months in Haifa in Israel - to where Immanuel and I had immigrated
on April 15, 1964 ,
my husband bought us a little house at Ramat-Hadar, a village some 18 km north
of Tel-Aviv.
When I was pregnant with my third child, in 1966, we enlarged the house --
to double its size.
While Rafael devised the small room for our clothes, including sowing-machine
and ironing ,
I devised the furniture for our study, where I & my husband could sit
at the same huge desk !
On each side of the desk there was a little table for two typewriters ---
for Hebrew and Latin!
After many wanderings of these 3 tables, Immanuel discarded the huge one and
a small one.
The other small one he shortened, scrapped off the formaica and placed on
it TV, DVD etc.
The terrible scanning of a photo of me,
while sitting between huge desk and small table in 1977
When the new Shoham flat was put in order, I wanted to adopt the disposed
43 year old table,
but then Tomer came and asked me, if he could have it - , together with a
pretty velvet cloth.
The "Faeries" is his only book and he let Abba order it, after he
had discovered it at Ezuz.
As usual: "Don't
photograph me!" and he hides in the niche
of his computer.
When he is not at boarding-school, he is totally addicted to music & games.
No skate-boards any longer.....
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