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InteGRATion into
GRATeFULLness
Close-ups of my Past
2007_08_18: Closeup of 2006_08_15
Rotem and Tomer and Grandma
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+ 2007 Sculpture completed on August 18, 2007; ~~~~ 2009 Sculpture completed on July 27, 2009 |
While I was working on
"Conditions for Heaven-on-Earth", August 17,
concerning my pressure-pattern and the trigger
I attracted from Rotem,
my feelings got drawn more and more into some sights and experiences,
caught by my camera a year ago,
when Rotem
and Tomer
were with me for 3 days around my birthday.
In those awakened memories there is more than compensation for this year's
trigger,
there is true healing for me and overwhelming love for Rotem and Tomer.
I told in "Conditions for Heaven
on Earth", how we came to see the sunrise above the Dead Sea.
 Rotem's photo |
 We walk home for breakfast |
 Following the first crisis Tomer sleeps for 14 hours on my veranda, with the light on all night. Close to midnight I call my friend Zipi, who lives in the same street. "Please, help me". So she gets out of bed and comes and listens and helps. "Don't worry, he is a star-child after all". 
Tomer's photo of Zipi, the next night |
 Rotem sleeps peacefully on my bed, under the paintings of her mother Ronnit and her uncle Micha, painted when they were small children. [See her below - 3 years later - in almost the same position! ] |
 "Don't photograph me", screams Tomer and turns away, but another time he photographs himself: see below |
 Good Togetherness This time Tomer makes a face to destruct my photo. |
 At that time Rotem still played the guitar (now it's the flute), here she tries to transpose a guitar score to a piano score |
 She
is always so beautiful |
It was my birthday, and Rotem and Tomer asked
for permission,
to walk all alone into the desert, east of Arad.
When they didn't come back in time, I could have hit myself.
But they came back safely, and they came back with a gift:
"You know Tomer",
told Rotem, "he cannot walk on a trail!
So we walked without trail or direction.
Suddenly we saw this nyloned drawing lying around in no-where.
We both had the idea to bring it to you as a birthday-gift.
But we also needed a flower!
So we prayed: Please let us find a flower."
"How can you find a flower in the desert in August?"
I wondered.
"But we did find one, one single, lonely
flower!"
And then she explained their gift:
In the center: "Shalom" (peace and wholeness in Hebrew)
To the left are printed the letter 
and the number 23.
"You may know, perhaps, if 23 symbolizes anything."
I didn't know, but the threefold symbol was enough:
The Shalom, the lonely desert flower, and the
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It touches my heart, not only because it blossomed in the desert August heat,
but it reminds me of Tomer's father's prophecy,
Immanuel's drawing in 1971, when he was eight years old:
"A single flower in the desert".
Following the crisis the evening before, I suggested
a game, Zipi's idea:
"I shall be the Queen, and you serve me,
serve me cooperatively!"
How strange - I never remembered later, what had caused the crisis.
But trying to decypher the captions of my photos, it must have been like this:
"Tomer, please bring me the thermos".
This was probably the first time, that I dared
to ask Tomer to do something.
And he - sure enough - refused:
"Let Rotem do it!"
This must have done it for me.
I probably screamed at him:
"See all the work I do for our togetherness. See
how much Rotem helps me,
and you cannot move your ass one single time to bring me an item from there
to here?"
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"You, the
Queen, do only what you do best, and you thank them for serving you". This was Zipi's advice the night before. When Tomer finally got up in the morning, and slowly slowly things between us became normal again, I asked them, if they would like to play the Queen-Game. "Think about it for a while, and then tell me." After a while they came and said, they were interested. I even dressed - for the first time - in my daughter's wedding garment, which she had "bequeathed" to me in 1995. The game "worked" for some time, maybe even hours, but then another crisis put an end to it. |
 The Queen rests. Rotem's photos |
 Together they water my garden |
 Tomer teaches Rotem Beethoven's "For Elise". |
 Rotem's photo. Sheer Beauty |
 Rotem's photo. The Beginning of Creation |
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Rotem dances! Below: my camera's creation..... double wholeness |
 Listening together. No words. No friction The beauty of cooperation and coordination |
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Absorbed in his music
In the middle of the Queen-Game-
another crisis, for 3 hours
and then a peaceful walk to the desert - to see the sunset
From here on: Tomer's photos:
 Zipi, in personal distress, suddenly finds us and joins us. |
 Starchild photographs Starchildren: Three different worlds, three different ages, three different moods |
 Can you accept yourself? |
 Can you laugh at yourself |
 Why are we in each others' dramas? |
Did you discern a budding woman?
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"There is no war anymore, so
who is calling?"
[The
second Lebanon War had "ended" a day before my birthday...]
Addition on 2007_08_12
In the light of Arnon's
heart-wrenching cry,
triggered by Yael's encouraging support:
"This is the chance to tell your sister everything,
you have always wanted to tell her,
and this is the chance for your sister to listen to you, Arnon!"
I want to quote a passage, I discovered in my diary of Aug. 28, 2006
to
former accidental closeup of my Past 
to next
accidental closeup of my Past
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2009_07_26 I follow my understanding and new lekh-lekhâ on January 1, 2009, that - after 7 years - I should no longer create new pages on my 2 websites, but intermingle the evidence of new experiences with that on existing pages. Here are five inserts about Rotem's visit with Grandma in July 20-25, 2009 Arad ~~~ Mitzpe-Ramon ~~~ Arad
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Rotem's last visit with me in Arad was together with Lior Oren on Chanuka 2008
In July 2009 she was ready to come to me all alone,
and after some postponements(!) even traveled alone,
though the day before I returned from Bet-Nehemya
and it seemed logical to meet at Tel-Aviv train-station
and make the journey together to Arad by train & bus.
In the end there was no train - because of reparations,
and she took the rare bus from Tel-Aviv right to Arad.
Why should I explain such details?
Because I want to be transparent with the sheer terror,
which I felt in expectation of my granddaughter's visit.
And it was good, that I had a day for myself - to cope,
and that the 'tournament' began only in Arad, my home.
I am flushing with shame even now when admitting this.
But "grandmotherhood" is NOT what people think it is.
It is yet another "arena for training how to live and love".
It's a stage for a drama between mutually chosen actors.
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The only pictures I took during the first 48 hours
show the exterior reflection of the interior state of soul:
The process of finding a way to sleep together in my one-room flat.
Though I had guests often before - even three or four at a time -
we both were making the matter more complicated
by being so sensitive towards the other's comfort.
I and she knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, if there was the slightest noise,
of her turning around on my mattress, leave alone of her talking in her sleep.
To sleep on the veranda all night? the first twitter of the birds wakes me
up.
To put a mattrass in the kitchen? The ventilator would not reach both of us.
The images show, how - on the veranda - I moved from corner to corner
so as to at least not be bothered by the glare from the street-lamp,
and so as to avoid the softness of all the mattrasses on the veranda.
Finally I "made it", by removing one of the double thin mattrasses.
But in that corner there was no lamp! I "need" to read to fall asleep.
So I "suffered", until sleep rescued me, but only for some hours.
The temperature - so high during the entire week - became lower,
and the sheet, with which I had covered myself, wasn't enough.
So I took the removed mattrass inside and put it in the kitchen.
At that hour I didn't need a vent and I finally got some sleep,
at least until Rotem laughed in her sleep, and that was it.
But then neither light nor twitter woke me up until 8:30!
Still - the solution was found:
I would prepare 2 mattrasses and begin with sleeping outside.
After some hours, when I woud need to go to the loo anyway,
I would try to sleep inside for the rest of the night.
Also: since my very old computer-lamp had died two days before ,
we went to find the last, soon-to-be shut-down lamp-shop in Arad,
where simple bedside lamps were sold, and where I was advised
to switch from the usual bulbs to those which give 65 W for 15 W.
I - who never buy anything! - bought 2 lamps, one for that corner!
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I want to insert a dialog with "God", which I wrote to
my own email-address and edited before Rotem's coming. But looking at my circumstances, to go to Lior - she said, she didn't want any
visitor this week, I'm afraid, if I have such terrible resistance
against her coming, so what's the matter with me! But you know, how fragile she is, how easily
she feels "insulted", "How do you think, that you two can grow? I feel like falling into the abyss, in absolute
panick. She is my daughter's daughter! Any failing on my part will have repercussions on the entire family.
Even if I can release this one, there is another
judgment:
Can I really let go of my grandmotherly attitude of pleasing her, the granddaughter? "You not only can, you must. And if I fail? "In the case of Yaacov you have
no problem with this stage of his progress, have you. What about the fact, that Rotem did not answer
my message
Thank you so much! You are loved! And you are loving just as you are and will be - tomorrow.
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I fetched Rotem from the bus-station,
and soon after we settled down in my flat,
I asked her permission to share my plight.
I also begged her to voice her feelings about the "tournament",
or, if this metaphor was too much for her,
to let us come to an agreement
about what she needed from me or did not need or want from me.
She was very present and attentive during my talk,
but asked to postpone her response or reaction.
The next day she asked for further postponement,
and then I had to let go of my quest.
On the fifth day a series of mutual triggering occurred,
but except for some hours of "each one to herself",
nothing serious happened,
and I feel (July 26), that we did win after all, both of us!
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I want
to close this first insert with the beautiful memory of how - after that "each one to herself" - she took my flute, and really made it HER flute, by practising the different fingering and by playing pretty little pieces together with me on the keyboard. [see our common history about playing the recorder above the 4th insert] In fact, there was a sign of "redemption" for me. For those pieces belonged to some 12 little booklets, which I had bought in winter 1963-64, before I joined my son's father in Israel, hoping that we could play together. It never happened, not with him nor with anyone else. But how did my flute come to new glory? When I said to Rotem on the phone: "Don't forget to bring your flute!" she answered mysteriously: "I cannot! I'll tell you when we meet". She didn't volunteer to tell me, though. There was too much pain involved. When I drew her out, I learnt, that 2 months ago Yael had to bring the flute home, since Rotem after her lesson had to go to Tel-Aviv. Yael had done this job many times before, but on that day she forgot the flute in the bus-station. She realized it after a minute, got off the bus, walked back to the station - the flute was gone. Rotem knew, how terrible this was for her sister. She tried to soothe her: "It's not the end of the world". But it was a little like the end of the world. It had only been a few months before, that her parents had bought this flute for some 5000 NIS. In fact, when I was with the Four in the Immanuel-Cave and asked each of them, what was most important for them at present, and what they most wanted for the next school-year, Yael said, she wanted a private teacher for clarinet. "For the teacher we have in the Democratic School, does not play all the instruments he teaches. Rotem, for instance, and her flute! For years he had taught her the wrong way of holding the instrument." This should have been the natural situation for sharing with us, what had happened to that flute. But she did not say anything. She seemed to deny the pain, as did Rotem. Now go on to the second insert and see what I figured out.... |
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Continuation of the photos
of Rotem's Visit with Grandma in July 2009 in the second insert:
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