InteGRATion into GRATeFULLness
Singing&Sounding keeps me Sound

Oifm Weg sheit a Boim

2007_12_19 Oifm weg shteit a boim

lyrics&tune: unknown

From a blog about the song, I understand, that other people mainly know only Itzik Manger's version, called "Lullaby in Yiddish" Hear "Oifn weg" by Avigail Rosenblatt and an animated video in Hebrew

Oifm Weg shteit a boim is er eingebeugn got a Jid gen Eretz Yisroel mit verweinte Oign. Gott, Gott, groiser Gott, lo mir dawnen mincho as di Jidn wern forn gen Eretz Yisroel wern sein sasn ve-simcho.     A note in my song-block tells me, that I learnt the original song, from the radio, maybe in 1966, both in Yiddish and in Hebrew? It is the first page on the block, in which - shortly before the year 2000- I gathered all my songs from many books and writings.

Itziq Manger turned the original sad song into what I perceive as a parody
about a Yiddishe Mamme
called "Lullaby in Yiddish",
but from the following info I learn, that the "Mamme" etc. is a metaphor
and the song a parody about Jews who prefer the Exile to Eretz Yisrael.

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continuation of my family's experiences and my own experiences with my family, since 2012

Mika about herself: "a girl that loves herself"

Mika about her fears: "I walked up the stairs, I thought that I had a snoopie in the room I looked and I saw that I just imagined I entered the bathroom I said: there is a ghost then my fear disappeared I took a shower and I thought, that the pink water was a witch in transparent colors [the following is not clear: then I reached something that already is for everyone] There are no such things in the world one does not have to be scared, count till 3, take a deep breath and in the end everything will pass

January 30, 2012

Mika called me:
"The club of old people at Shoham sent two grandmothers to our school.
They asked us how it was for us to see old people,
and they also advised us to ask our grandfathers and grandmothers
how it is for them to be old.
So how is it for you, savta, to be old?"

Since I know Mika's limited capacity to listen to an answer,
at least from savta [who is always tempted "to teach her"],
and more so via the phone,
I concentrated on celebrating three joys of being old:
"I'm healthy, healthier even than when I was a child and had e.g. so often headaches."

"I have learnt to live.
Perhaps you don't understand why it is necessary to learn to live."
"Oh yes I do understand that, we just learnt about "links to life"."
But when she told me about this activity at school,
she understood by herself,
that it had to do with what we call "sustainable living",
and that I meant something else.

"What I had to learn, was to ..."
I don't remember how I tried to phrase it,
for Mika interrupted me with a clear voice:
"that you must listen to your own heart!"

I had never summarized my life's lesson so clearly:
"How well you phrased it, Mika!
When I was a child , I was told, that what I believed had no value,
only the grownups were right and I had to obey them."
(while I said that, I had the most horrid memories,
especially how this twisted belief led to that rape at the age of 10
pp42 "Victim and Perpetrator" : click CTRL/F and put "fuck" in "find")
"No", said Mika firmly, "
you must not listen to what other people say to you,
you must always listen to your own heart."


The third joy I mentioned, was that I no longer have to take care of my "parnasah" (making a living).
It turned out, that she didn't know this word, nor that people work for a parnasah.
She was sure, that money for food and her noon-school etc. is coming "from the bank"....

Then she had enough of what old people feel
and told me, that she had prepared a drawing for me,
which she wanted to mail me in a paper envelope.
Even through the phone she always wants to create something together with me.
So I taught her, how to write my address
(she already knows the script for hand-writing, not only for print,
and when she grasped, that her own address had to be written on the back of the envelope
and not on the front together with the address of the addressee,
she quickly found a solution: "Oh I'll over-write it with many little hearts".
Then we talked about the stamp and where to buy it.
She thought, the little boutique with the neighborhood letter-boxes was "the post-office".
And only now she realized, what those big red boxes were,
into which a to-be-sent-letter had to be inserted.
Her mother called (it was the time to go to bed:
"say shalom to savta , since you have to take your inhalations",
but when Mika asked for a few more moments she came in,
saying, that she had a stamp, and was surprised, that the address
Rachel Bat-Adam, Khaelmonit Street 15, c/o Cohen,
was truly readable.

February 5, 2012

Mika called me,
"It's Tu-bi-Shvat
and I want you to come on Shabbat"
Though the feast of trees will be already on February 8,
2 days before Friday, on which I need to travel,
if I want to be with Mika for Shabbat,
she repeated it over and over again:
"It's Tu-bi-Shvat! Please come"
saying "please" in English
please, please, please.
"I haven't seen you for a long time,
please come, please, please, please."

The day before I had explained two more times,
on the phone to Yanina and by mail to Na'ama,
that I will go to Shoham only after they'll come to Arad,
so as to definitely establish a new routine.
And now this pressure,
which not only made me feel guilty,
but played into my great longing for Mika...

I argued: "But if I come, you'll forget our agreement,
the agreement, that it is you who has to come to Arad!"
She knew exactly what I meant:
"No, I won't forget, I promise, I won't forget!
I'll even write it down and pin it up in my room!"

She immediately got herself a piece of paper
and in my presence and with a bit of help in phrasing and spelling
wrote down:
"I won't forget the agreement, that I will visit Savta in Arad".
I demanded to pin it up on the fridge,
"so that your parents will also remember,
since you need them to come to Arad""
She did so, and since Abba was around,
she let him read the note rightaway.

I finally said, that she should call me tomorrow,
and that only then I'll give her a definite answer.
She wanted me to call her, but I insisted,
that "if you are afraid to forget to call me,
I can not trust you to remember that agreement!"

It is a hard learning for me,
who can be so easily manipulated even after all my life's lessons....


February 6, 2012
She indeed called me, but wanted me to come already on Thursday:
"for from Friday after school till Shabbat afternoon my friend Elah will be here,
and you and I also want to spend some time alone, right?"
I didn't make life easy for her,
not really understanding, why she invited me on a weekend like that.
But finally - with the intervention of her mother -
and because Yael, Mika's cousin, would also come on Shabbat, for 4 hours,
( she had wanted to visit me at Arad, but transport makes this impossible between the end of school and the last 3 busses)
I agreed to come on Friday and fetch Mika and Elah right from school, at 11:45.
"By the way".... Efrat let me know,
that as soon as Immanuel will have a flightless weekend,
they will visit me at Arad....

February 8, 2012

An SMS from Elah: "can you sent me the German original of "little pain"? I had to tell her, that it was her grandfather Rafael, who had made this little rhyme for our children - in Hebrew! And that I added some tunes and changed the name from child to child, from grandchild to grandchild. In Facebook I found a new image of Elah, the actress

February 10-12, 2012
Friday 11:30 till Sunday 8:30

How come, that I found myself again at Shoham ,
though the family still had not stood up to my condition,
to start a new routine by first visiting me at Arad?

At the beginning of this week Mika called me by phone:
"I want you to come to us, because it's Tu Bishwat!
I haven't seen you a long time [since her birthday on Dec. 20, 2011)
please come, please, please, please"
The "please" she said in English with utmost manipulative expression!
"But if I come , you'll forget our agreement,
that you first visit me at Arad!"
"No, no, I won't forget, I promise, I'll even write it down".
She got herself a piece of paper and a pen and wrote it down,
letting herself helped with spelling now and then.
"I'll pin it up on my pin-board in my room!"
"No", I said, "stick it to the fridge, so your parents can see it,
after all , for coming to Arad, you are dependent on your parents."
By chance, her father was around and she let him read it - aloud.
There was another stumbling-block, as I understood:
Mika's friend Elah would be dumped on Mika and Efrat for the weekend,
since her parents would go away for a holiday,
"and I owe them a lot", explained Efrat, who was troubled by this prospect.
But since Elah is a little girl, who is close to my heart,
and since I - in the past - preferred to meet little kids in the company with other kids,
I only said: "but why do you need me, while you have a friend with me?"
and did not push Mika too much to answer that question.

Still, I wouldn't have come , if not for the chance to see Yael.
Yael, my daughter's daughter and Mika's cousin, had suddenly written to me:
"I became aware, that I haven't seen you for a long time [since August, I think'
and I want to see you, tell you about myself and hear, how your life is."
We had fixed a day, but public transport, tedious from Modi'in to Arad in any case,
turned out to be impossible on Fridays, unless she would miss school.
In any case, I thought it was wise not to expose this shy girl to an entire weekend with Grandma,
but to meet just for a few hours on Shabbat, and suggested to pay her for a taxi,
though I knew, that her parents would rather be mad at this arrangement than agreeing to a taxi

What a contrast
between the little girls asking for friendship and the adjacent scene:
two old, faded , obviously demented people in wheelchairs
and their Asiatic helpers, who conversed vividly with each other

Yael, Mika's cousin, joins us, and before she and I'll have our solitary togetherness, she enjoys the two girls - at least as long as they are not involved in competitions and ego-games

In order to let them feel, that the "bad feelings" concerning the "sphinx" were healed, I asked them - on our way back from our pretty trip into Nature and Spring- to once more play the "sphinx" The story about the Sphinx: It started very well: after lunch the three of us went up to Mika's room. The girls sat on the floor around paper and colors and Mika invited me to take part in drawing. After I, too, had scetched some accidental lines, Mika added some lines and colors to my "drawing" "Oh this looks like a sphinx", I exclaimed. They had never heard, what a sphinx was. As I was in the middle of teaching them, Efrat , who, as Mika said: " hears me, even if I am in another house", came up with her laptop and on the open screen images of the Egyptian sphinx, which she had quickly uploaded from the Internet. The girls tried to imitate the face of the sphinx, and that's where Mika attracted a trigger from me: "Elah's face is more suitable to express a sphinx", meaning that Mika's face was too lively for this. But Mika heard it as : "Elah is better than you", and was so offended, that she hid among her little make-up table, barricaded herself and forbid 'anyone to enter'. On Sunday-morning, just before she left for school, I asked Mika to once more make the face of a sphinx and also to hold up the co-creation with the image which originally had reminded me of a sphinx. Of course, since then the bad feelings were gone.

continuation at the end of SongGame 2007_12_20, Mika's birthday