Here is a sculpture of joyful experiences with Mika,
which contrasts Avital's song and balances it.
I begin it with the song , which I learnt from Mika:
Open your eyes
and look at the world,
the world is full of beauty,

On July 16, 2009, I had succeeded in recording Mika on my cell-phone,
when she sang about the beauty of this earth and this life,
if we train ourselves in actually SEEING it.

Then, during the family's refuge with my daughter's family at Modi'in,
they once drove all the way down to Eilat to see Elah's performance,
and on there way back north, they rested in my castle for a few hours.
The first thing, Mika discerned, were these pretty flowers in my garden.
"How are they called?" To my regret, I didn't know.
Like I did with all plants - I once "stole" a shoot from a public park...

2009_09_12- Mika: "They build the house for us!" Mika finds it difficult to bear the interim-time at her aunt's family in Modi'in, after the departure from her former home at Bet-Nehemya on August 27, 2009 and until the next flat - at Shoham - will be emptied by its owners on Sept. 23

On one of the weekends during that time, the family visits me at Arad

Mika was delighted, when I suggested that she water the garden. She immersed herself in her assignment so deeply, that her countenance did not change, even when I changed the angle from which I photographed her. On the second image the house across the garden is visible and on its wall those wheels, which for some unknown reason made Mika - just before their car left a few hours later - mention, "there - the wheels on grandfather Rafael's house..." She never knew her grandfather, nor was Rafael ever in Arad...

We gathered the last pomegranates from my tree,
in a little basket in the form of a heart, discovered by Mika,
"so there may be love!"
Most of the fruits were infested with worms,
so we saved one little, intact fruits "as a jewel" in a glass,
while from an infested fruit we picked a fat worm
and set it free on the compost-heap, "so that it can live".

Mika, who so much misses her own "house", after having lived for 3 weeks with her cousins, finds a temporary abode in the basket on my veranda, but it is dusty and uncomfortable- since it's "ornamenting" my landlords' parking-lot.

A delightful correspondence with Immanuel, my son , on Sept. 17, just before Rosh Hashanah

We see each other a week later, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah,
where they meet me in a real house, the house of Mika's uncle Micha.

Mika accompanies her singing with one finger on Arnon's keyboard

"Abba - play with me "Sack of Flour"

Dinner on the second day of Rosh Hashanah with Mika's uncle Micha, his wife Ra'ayah and Mika's cousins: Arnon and Ayelet

Mika got Ayelet to leave the computer in her room,
in order to play with us in "my" room, the guest-room.
But - to my regret - someone called us for some in-between snacks,
just when the "momentum" of Ayelet's cooperation had built up
(playing Mika's strange version of "hide and seek",
in which Mika gives exact instructions as to what the seeker has to say,
when "discovering" the all too visible hidden Mika, or Mika with grandma...)

Upstairs Mika and Arnon share their delight in Arnon's bitch, called "Qesem", i.e. "Magic"

While the two children enjoy each other - with no Ayelet in sight -
the sisters-in-law talk to each other,
Arnon's father reads the newspaper
and Mika's father improves the programs on Efrat's new laptop

more photos of Ayelet and the family on a page about Grandma and Ayelet