Gotta keep the sealed room window shut

Everything that hasn't felt normal for the last 18 months

Apropos of nothing and apropos of everything, a running list I’ve been keeping about the small, tiny details that exist because of this ongoing war and hostage situation:

1. I keep the metal door and window completely shut in our sealed room — which also functions as our study, TV room, podcast studio, music room and guest room — because it’s too much of a pain to run in there when there’s a siren, raise (the illegal) screen, shut the heavy metal door, lock it, shut the window and get that all done in 1:30. Which means that I leave a small light on all the time, and that reminds me all day and night that things are not normal.

2. We marked our mom’s yartzeit this week, her fourth, and instead of saying kaddish during morning prayers at one of the shuls in our neighborhood, sister

   Beth Steinberg
   and I went to a special Shacharit service held in a basketball court nearby, as a kind of protest against Netanyahu’s chief negotiator Ron Dermer, along with hostage families and some bereaved families and we all prayed hard and loudly for some kind of change, some kind of movement in this impasse that we’re in. Among other things, I wondered just what my mother would have said. Probably “BRING THEM HOME!”

   

3. I went to a house sale hosted by Beth of the very wearable, everyday clothing designed by our Swedish friend Kiki Lotem, who’s lived in Israel for years and who made my wedding outfit 20 years ago and whose business has suffered in the last year and a half for all kinds of reasons, one of them being that she had customers in the south, in Kibbutz Nir Oz, and of course, they’re not hosting house sales right now because they can’t, not with ten hostages still from their kibbutz, and so many grieving families.

   

   A pic of us from my parents’ house, in the lucite “Shalom” frame which is so ugly but can’t help but love.

4. Every single conversation you have comes back to the 7th, to the situation, somehow, even when I’m interviewing the owner of NeoPolitan Pizza in Haifa, who just won an award, and whose business is going so well and who besides making thousands of pizzas for evacuated families in Haifa, told me he just can’t think of going anywhere, even to Naples, his pizza home, until this situation is over.

5. My friend Jon Polin wrote a post asking all the 68 coalition politicians not to wear the yellow hostage pin — because it is so clear that they don’t care a whit, those are my words — because it just adds to his pain as a bereaved father of a hostage —Hersh — killed in captivity.

   

6. Pesach is coming, and while we’re making some plans, and planning what will be a nice seder with family and friends, and hosting some beloved visitors, I’m so aware that my heart is not in it. I don’t want to clean — okay, I never really want to dive into intensive spring cleaning — I don’t want to think about fun recipes or outings. I just want these hostages home, I want a shift, I want change.

I know, we all do.