Di Mutter Sarah wiegt die Wieg
schlof Yitzchakl , tate , schlof,
es paschet oif der Lanke
der Pastoch seine Schof.

Mother Sarah rocks the cradle:
Yitzchakl , Tate [="father"], sleep!
The shepherd in the meadowgrass
Is pasturing his sheep.

[The next 5 verses I omit:
4 verses present a discussion between two lambs ,
whether it's day or night,
each trying to prove its view!
In the fifth verse the shepherd decides
to ask the "little man himself whether it's night or day"]

Now ay-liu-liu-liu, Yitzchakl little one,
Now hush and go to sleep.
Hear them knocking at our door:
The shepherd and his sheep.

Be quiet, shepherd, if you please
Can't you see it's night/
The fact is Yitzchak , avinu [=our father], has
His eyelids fastened tight.

With seven tiny drops of dew
The ruddy poppies gleam,
And dozing on their barnyard perch,
the hen and rooster dream.

The shepherd answers: As you wish -
and gently shrugs along,
Taking in his tiny pipe
Mother Sarah's song.

See more poems by Itzik Manger about Abraham & Sarah

An Evening
opposite the Gil'ad Mountains

The trees are so heavy,
the fruit bends the branches,
this is the relaxing hour
in which the children fall asleep.

Down the vale from the Gil'ad
a black and young lamb descends,
a sheep bleats and weeps in the pen,
It was her little son who got lost.

It will return, the lamb into the mother's lap,
will lie down in the pen and fall asleep,
the sheep will kiss him
and will call him by name.

Hidden is the night between the branches,
and the Gil'adi prophet [[Eliyah]]
will descend silently into the vale
to watch the sleep of the children.

A Lullaby

lyrics: Lea Goldberg /
tune: Nechama Hendel or Miki Gavrielov?
[See more of Lea Goldberg's song on SongGame>Authors]

sings Arik Sinai ~~~~~~Another performance

Learning and recording this song
was even more difficult than usual.
I wonder , why... April 15, 2011,
the day, on which I immigrated to Israel
with my now circumcised son, at the age of 15 months.

Of course, the recording is far from perfect,
but "the enemy of the good is the best."..

The next abba-less day was a Shabbat,
so extremely hot, that the outside pool was open,
and Efrat suggested, that we take advantage of it,
we - meaning Mika and I.

Still, the water was too cold for Mika,
and she find charming ways of not being in it,
until I convinced her to swim with me in the inside pool.

There, as before , we had the loveliest of time together.
Again, I disciplined myself in taking photos...
These two may suffice to document the situation:
one - a photo requested by Mika herself- hints at the (new) fact,
that Mika can swing endlessly,
the other - extraordinary:
She suggested to change our place of sitting,
"I'll bring all our stuff!" she said.
The former place was quite far away .
When she traced her way through ever so many other people,
she was burdened with all our - unpacked - stuff, and forgotten nothing.

In the late afternoon, Mika's sister came, Elah,
awaited with great impatience.
Again, Efrat wanted "to go out", this time very close by,
but "of course" we had to go by car.
The pictures - with the phone-camera - are bad.
Still, they show an additional aspect of Mika's life:
"akhotee!" "My sister!"

If not for the eyes of the cat, I wouldn't have kept this picture

Had I known about Efrat's "process of liberation" from me
(see on Oct. 24-25 in "The Mother's Eruption")
I wouldn't have been so disciplined with taking photos.
Especially when - 2 days later - the two little girls, Mika and Ronni, played together,
there were plenty of fantastic scenes.
And when I finally ran for my camera, I returned too late:
The comedy, which Efrat was playing - to amuse the girls, was fantastic:
Her glass with water "simply wouldn't find her mouth", since she was "blind"...

Before Ronni had to go home, Mika called me: "Take our photo, please!" It came out badly, But Mika wanted this hug to be documented. "What is a hug?" she said to Imma 10 days later. "It make the bird of the soul grow inside you!"

And then there is only one last photo:
This time Abba had flewn to a special country: Japan.
He walked around some city
and saw an ad about a workshop for creativity.
Since he is about to fulfill his dream of "MIKARO"
(see in "I honor all their experiences" on October 15-16, 2009)
he wanted to experience being a pupil in such a workshop,
and drew on a fan, which he then presented Mika with.

Abba came back on Tuesday morning,
and after only 20 minutes packed me and Mika in the car,
brought Mika to kindergarden and me to the hitchhiking junction,
and raced back, since Efrat needed the car to go to work ,
her new work with Talli and with Levi and Ayelet.

On Friday night , Oct. 30, Efrat and Mika called me.
Efrat: "Mika is very angry that you are not here!
I told her, that there are no busses any longer.
But MIka countered:
"Grandma doesn't need busses to come here!"
She was in the car already twice,
when I was brought to the junction,
from where I often hitchhike back to Arad,
so as to spare my children to take me all the way to Lod,
the train-station where I arrive, when I come to Shoham.

I laughed and felt proud, that Mika knows her grandma so well...

November 5, 2009

I was away from Mika, Efrat and Shoham longer than usual.
See on Oct. 24-25, 2009, how this was all of a sudden not easy for me.
After Immanuel fetched me from Lod-trainstation,
and Tomer, his son, from Ben-Shemen-Boarding School,
we drove to fetch Micha from kindergarden.

She wanted me to come in "and see the children", though she doesn't "allow" even Imma to enter. But see 5 days later... And after

Hiding in a flexible barrel

At home she grasps a flexible barrel in her room, throws out all the toys in it, and come to play "Hiding" in grandma's room

ll	After dinner on the veranda she plays a "fairy-princess"

Tomer is around the fairy-princess, too