Tonight Sheree, Indi and I are about to have our first sleepover guests, from our sister and brother in spirit, Lironne and Saar. The last couple of weeks have seen epic battles to overcome dirt, roaches, mold, and the Israeli system, and our bodies are feeling it. We’re getting quite close to having the most adorable apartment in the most adorable neighborhood, with the most adorable dog, and all of that makes us feel lucky and happy every day, (at least most of the day). We decided to make a celebratory dinner, in our big-by-Israeli-standards, uh, let’s say portable oven, (though all appliances are portable here, aint they. Hey Israeli tenants, let's all make a pact together starting today, ready? One, two, three…Leave your appliances when you move!)
We went out earlier to get groceries for our little party. My application for a club card at Supersol, a necessity to make shopping significantly more affordable and steer me toward certain brands, required my teudat zehut (Israeli ID) number. So did getting a bus pass, and just about anything else I’ve done here. I’ve never felt so on the grid, but somehow more OK with Israel knowing whatever they feel they need to than I am with the dirt that Facebook, Google and the other cyber overlords can now calculate on me. (wow, some subpar grammar in that last sentence. Forgive me, my now-native-language is not English, my friends). We found these super cute mugs/bowls that we absolutely had to have. Sheree stopped for a second, to remind me that we had to check if they were dishwasher safe. You know, so they could go in her lovely dishwasher…in her townhouse in Highland Park, IL. Oh right, the dishwashers here are colorful, crappy sponges that melt in your hand are just generally much worse than American sponges, for about twice the price and a tenth of the options. Speaking of a tenth, you know what the giant, economy sized pack of paper towels has? Six small rolls. Six. That’s as big as it gets. My Target-Costco American mind can hardly comprehend this.
Mugs in cart, we went to the cheese counter, where we tasted cheese and picked our favorites. Having decided on lasagna for dinner, I asked the impatient old Israeli woman if they had any ricotta. “MAH?” (what?) Ricotta, I repeated. “MAH?!?!” Screwing on my best Israeli accent, I tried once more, “rhee-coat-tah” “OH, rhee-COAT-tah!! ZEH, yesh lanu.” (Oh, Riccota, this we have.) Thus a lesson learned – Yes, Israelis may be nice about our American accents, but that doesn’t mean they’ll go out of their way to know what we’re talking about when we don’t make the effort to clench our throats and pepper our speech with ehhhh’s. Once she supplied the rhee-coat-tah and before we could tell her if we wanted anything else, she walked away having decided we had enough cheese, and she had enough of us, for the evening. As for lasagna noodles, there was but one option, Osem. Fortunately, these noodles fit in the one of 2 sizes aluminum pans available, something I’ve grown to not assume will happen around here. We continued down the aisles, getting what we needed. We were laughing the whole time, generally enjoying the experience, and continually reminding ourselves of our growing Israeli-ness. Next time, we knew, we’d bring the small rolling bag that we had taken on the bus to Tel Aviv’s Shuk HaCarmel just a few days ago, to fill with groceries and housewares. But this time, without the roller bag and laden with heavy bags, we took advantage of the loophole available to us when in a jam – smile cutely, act like a lost, sweet American woman who just needs some kindness from a nice powerful Israeli man, and ask for what we want. We requested from the security guard that we be able to take home our plastic shopping carts to carry our groceries. A smile and some broken Hebrew can get a lot done around here, but must be used sparingly.
The nice thing here is, everyone in Israel gets how hard it is, and sometimes we all come together to get things done. Like the “Nahag Wave,” where a person runs to catch the bus, someone in the back of the bus sees it and yells “Nahag!” (driver,) and the yelled word Nahag is passed up the bus in a wave until it reaches the pretending-to-be-deaf-as-long-as-possible driver. These bus drivers are something. On the hectic and not fun day of moving into our apartment, for no apparent reason my bus pulled over as I tried to speed from Tel Aviv to Givatayim. After multiple people yelled at the driver, the most we got out of him was the word “dakah,” (minute), Several minutes later, his buddy walked onto the bus with a bag of food for him, they chatted briefly, and we were off. But that’s Israel, where the one time schedule you can be sure something won’t happen on is the one it’s supposed to happen on.
But I digress. Here we are in our apartment, the baking lasagna full of fresh-picked herbs from the garden hanging out our window, which is happily growing in the December sun. That sure makes the hard parts easy to forget. Lironne and Saar are on their way. There are the most divine French macaroons in our fridge, from the sweet Israeli girl at the fabulous French patisserie just down the street. Life is absolutely wonderful. And really hard, and sometimes completely ridiculous. Enough that the first response I get from so many Israelis when they hear of my solo aliyah is, “WHY?!” We chuckle together. But I think they know. I’m home. And we’re all in this together. And if we can relinquish some control, and most expectations, we can enjoy the crazy wild ride.
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