Biographical Sculptures

Grand mother hood

Yael's 52 weeks or 365 days of her seventh year

2003_05_11-13 ; First of four Pages
Second Page~~~Third Page~~~ Fourth Page

A few days before her seventh birthday Yael, my daughter Ronnit's third child,

a d v a n c e d t o p a i n t w i t h

~~~~~~~~WATER~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~COLORS~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~FLOWERS~~~~~~~

"Do these paintings have a title?" grandma asks, still in need of words and names. "No," she said simply. At the age of 5 she had painted the Sea, blue and orange, and then cut out a fish and glued it on it. The painting s hang on the wall of my veranda within the composition of others, until the winter storms tore and washed it away. Luckily Yael had photographed it on June 19, 2002

A day before the 9th of May I said: "Tomorrow will be your 7th birthday!" Yael associated candles, gifts and parties, but the fact, that she was born on that day, was meaningless to her. Itamar, her brother (5y) keeps painting the "Solar System" with all the planets cycling around the sun in the right order hinting even at their size relative to the earth. But neither he nor Yael have any idea of time. What is a day? a week? a year? seven years?

 

May 9, 2002 , Yael dances in grandma's flat, like the sun is revolving around itself.		May 16, 2002, Yael dances with Arnon at her home, on Shavu'ot, ["weeks", i.e. Pentecoast] while her mother watches and her father prepares dinner in the kitchen

For me - structuring TIME, any time,
is as beautiful, mysterious and helpful
as the structuring of space, any space.

I decided to make time feelable for her.

I was provided a small ball and a big ball.
We marked a dot on the small one: Israel.

I let Yael revolve the earth around itself.
"Israel" was disappearing into the night,
and reappearing into the sunny morning.

I taught her, that a week has seven, sheva', days,
as indicated in the Hebrew word shavu'a , week,
and in the festival shavu'ot, 7 weeks after Pesach.
This connection surprised her! She grasped it.

May 20, 2002 "Grandma's Path and Tree" [see her walking on it below: July 10, 2002]		May 22, 2002 "A Woman Sitting on a Turtle"

To simplify, I skipped the moon and the months,
and made her revolve the earth around the sun,
marking the circle 52 times---52 weeks x 7 days.

I saw, how she enjoyed that she got the picture.

May 23, 2002 The "Wednesday Quartet" plays crazy Micha's two kids and Ronnit's "Little Ones" spend the afternoon and evening at grandma's, have their dinner, their bath, everything together, and on top of all the fun the hour in their pyjama's. Arnon and Ayelet are mostly taken home asleep, while Yael and Itamar always stay for the night.

May 29, 2002 "Grandma, let's go to the park!" "which one?" "the park with the big swing!"

May 29, 02: On Mondays only Yael and Itamar spend the afternoon at grandma's Though not yet in school, Yael likes to "read" to Itamar, lying on my mattress	June 5, 2002 Yael and Ayelet and Tomer doing HeArt-Work in the tent, built by Alon and Arnon and Rotem in the middle of my living-room

For her birthday we spent 4 hours alone together.
I suggested,
that we introduce a new dance into our repertoire.
I would be the sun, also revolving,
and she would be the earth,
revolving around herself and around the sun.
And that's what we did.

June 5, 2002

Then I made her sit in front of me at the computer.
On my request, she had brought her last paintings.
She participated in photographing & editing them.

June 7, 2002 A photo, bad in quality, but too nice to skip it: Jonathan, Yael and Rotem have their 3 birthdays within 5 weeks. and one party, to which the Rosenzweig family is invited: Behind the dancers: Elah, Immanuel's eldest, Micha and Ronnit, and their stepsister Dita's daughter Orit a little apart.	June 13, 2002 Grandma's Succah-like space is ideal for the kids, mattresses, carpets and cushions, either from the pyramidal tent, in which I lived before I moved into this furnished flat or garbage from the street, nicely dressed up.

The "4 o'clock meal" is very cherished by all kids. This time I let her choose what to put on the stage. "The stage" is the recycled stand of a container. Usually it's she and Arnon, who carry the stage to where all the kids decide to have their meal. She wanted to have it on the veranda, and helped me sweetly to carry it there. There was tea from herbs I picked on my Hill, goodies&snacks always provided by Ra'ayah, and 7 candles stuck into a plate filled with soil.
June 14, 2002 --Playing horse and waggon in grandma's living-room		June 19, 2002 ---Itamar photographed Yael dancing. "It looks like a ghost, doesn't it?" I remarked on her birthday. She had a prettier association: "To me it looks like a butterfly!"

June 19, 2002 Sometimes Yael asks for my camera and looks for beauty. Today she shot her own painting, fastened to the bathroom door since January 2002, when she was not yet six. In this rare case she told me a story, which I noted: A girl and another girl lived in a big beautiful house. One day the girls went for a hike together. The first girl said: "Come, let's go into this direction." Then the other girl said: "Fine." And they walked, walked, walked till they got lost and the other girl said: "We lost our way, which way shall we go?" So the first girl said: "Perhaps left, perhaps right", and then both girls said: "Let's go straight." And then they walked and walked until they reached home and were happy.

While protecting the flames from the hot wind,
and crunching and munching and drinking,
I checked, if Yael could bring up
one memory of the past 365 days,
or one wish for the 365 days ahead.

She couldn't and I was not surprised.
So I decided to reflect her life to her.

"If you have no wish to get or to do anything,
it is because nothing is missing or lacking.

" Your life is, indeed, perfect: " Wonderful, loving parents, reasonably wonderful siblings, twin cousins who are also your friends, your beautiful, spacious two storey flat, leading into your father's beautiful garden. You live in a modern town, next to our beloved ancient Titorah. You go to the best school available in this society. With your caring teachers and in your afternoon classes, you learn only what you desire and choose to learn.

June 26, 2002 Co-creation between Yael, her sister Rotem and her cousin Arnon. Cardboard boxes like so much other garbage are always provided by either Arnon's parents or by me, whose only paid job is to clean the stairs, yard and garbage-room of this house. There is no end to the kids' ideas of what can be done with the trash, we bring them.

July 03, 2002 Yael and Ayelet play "Joking"

July 10, 2002 Walking on grandma's path, up the Titorah Hill, ancient Maccabean Modi'in. Yael's town Modi'in what is seen here, are its beginnings in the East. Emeq Dotan or the Dotan Valley and its Nr. 11, the house I live in, were the first to be inhabited in 1996. The village Maccabim - protruding a bit into Palestinian land - was there much earlier. It was where "mummy worked", when the little ones were with grandma. 10 days ago she quit her job as a nurse and director of a "Milk-drop" clinic, a special Israeli institution, where newborns up to a year are taken care of . Still, the kids will be with me on Wednesdays, and I shall be with them on Thursdays.

"you are healthy, you are pretty,
you have everything you want to dress,
you have everything you want to eat,

"You have every toy you want to play with.
And television and computer and what not.

" And you have grandma, a special one!"

July 15, 2002	She listens, munches and crunches, while I make a pause and look at her, and she looks at me, somewhat shy. "What is missing?" I hear myself asking, "You need to have peace in our country. >>and>> less kids in the world dying from hunger ~~~~~~~ Unwittingly - - I began to tell a story, or more exact - to describe a scene. "I see a little boy, maybe 4 years old, black, curly hair, in his mother's lap. He is too weak to stand on his feet, too weak even to open his eyes, and his mother too makes no move.	July 19, 2002 --- We photograph ourselves,
One more luxury for Yael: in summer grandma or her parents drive her to the delightful little pool in Neve-Shalom, and sometimes she meets Arnon even there.	"If you would think of that child, Yael, maybe he would live some more days.	while enjoying our famous 4 o'clock meal on the "stage', i.e. our "table" from the garbage, which also serves them as stage for their many kinds of performances.

"Give him a name, Yael!
To be able to think of him,
you must know his name!"

Yael pondered for a while and said;
"I don't know a name."
"Oh yes, you do! Think more!
Something like Bapu or Toto!"
She kept thinking
and then lifted her head in wonder.
"A strange name came to my mind!"
"What name?"
She had difficulty to pronounce it:
"Khnaebah" .

In that second
the wind defeated the 7 flames.
"Oh, Yael, that boy has died now!
It was too late."