What I'm Learning About Myself and Confrontation

In the past few weeks I've been in several unexpected confrontations. I'm not going to go into the details of them now although I hope to share about one in a future post.

I'm proud of how I handled these. I used time as a tool to wait to respond and to do so as clearly, simply, respectfully and calmly as possible.

Nevertheless, this process has led me to understand the following things about myself:

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Israel Part 13: The Final 24 Hours

One of the deciding factors in my doing this trip was the revelation that it would coincide with sheva brachot for Bat-Ami and Mike's son, Gavi and their new daughter-in-law, Daphna.  Sadly, covid cancelled that plan and the only visit I had had with Bat-Ami and Mike was the chat on their mirpeset (porch). 

That's not enough time to spend with the friend I've known longer than I've known anyone else in the entire country. So on my way back from Jerusalem, Bat-Ami picked me up at the train station in Modi'in and we got a few more hours in before my last night. We didn't talk much about war by now. We talked about food, about family and about education. Bat-Ami teaches English as a second language and we talked through some ideas together of how she can relay enough vocabulary to her students and have it be meaningful. I geeked out on the tiny bookstore she made (seen behind my ear in the photo) and then she took me back to the Altmans. They were out for the night but had left me a key and I went in and went straight to bed. 

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Israel Part 12: Jerusalem, the shuk, food in general and the comfort of familiarity

(Revised lightly on March 15, 2024)

By the time I got off the train in Jerusalem it was getting late and a heavy rain had set in. I had lost track of time, partly from jet jag and partly from a technical error. In planning my train trip I had taken screen shots of my route and while checking them again and again I somehow hadn’t registered that the time remained 11:22 on the images while actually it was past 3:00 in the afternoon when I got off the train. 

Now I didn’t really have time for Jerusalem. It’s huge. I needed to get back to Modi’in and a settle in for my last night before flying back to the U.S.

On the other hand, I couldn’t NOT go to Jerusalem. I struggled to rent a locker for my suitcase. (Misread what coins I needed and then needed to go to four different stores before I could get that change.)

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Israel Part 11: Train Ride South

On my Wednesday morning in Israel, Joel dropped me off at the Karmiel train station. I now felt much more equipped to buy my train ticket, locate the platform and order a croissant, at least partially using Hebrew to ask for what I needed. I had ridden to Karmiel in the dark. Now it was daylight. I spent much of that time writing the blogposts you've seen here, but also a lot of time looking out the window at the coastline. 

In the past week since my return I've started, both cautiously and confidently, to open up conversation with a very dear friend of mine. She has been concerned about my saying that that my worldview has changed and she wanted to see if I was still the person she knew. In our snippets of conversation (somehow fit in between laundry, school, parenting etc.) I've begun to find the words that have evaded me for these past 121 days.

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