Teaching Music
December 1 ,2015
Moving North
“We have to go see the doctor”, Mom told me when I woke up on a cold winter day. I had a terrible night, wheezing and coughing for hours. They had to call the doctor at the middle of the night, and he gave me a shot to help me breath. It wasn’t fun.
Mom helped me dress, put Avi in the carriage and we all went to the doctor’s office. It was very cold outside, but it didn’t rain. You see, it is very dry in Be’er Sheva – Israel's Desert’s Capital. It gets very cold, but it hardly rains. Instead, we have wind, very strong wind. It picks up the dusty earth and blows it around, forming little tornado like swirls and sandstorms.
“Your Son is allergic to the dust here,” said the doctor. “As I told you before, you must move to the north if you don’t want your son to develop asthma.”
Yes, I know,” mom answered, “my husband is in Netanya looking for a place to move. He already found a job.”
“Good!” said the Doctor. “Meanwhile, give him this twice a day.” He gave mom a reaccept of medication to get from the pharmacist. (Many years later I discovered that all my problem was allergy to milk. It messed up my breathing as well as my stomach.)
Not long after we were ready to move. I had to say goodbye to my little dog Lassie. We gave it to Uncle David. Dad and Uncle Simon (Remember him? From the trip to Tel Aviv) loaded the small truck with our belonging and off we went. Dad went with in the truck with Uncle Simon. Mom Avi and I went by taxi. I slept all the way, dreaming that Mom was walking away from me and no matter how loud I would try to yell for her, she didn’t hear me. My voice simply wouldn’t come out. It was like a silent cry – it was awful, I felt helpless and when I woke up all sweaty from fear we were in Netanya.
Netanya was a small new town over the sandy beach of the Mediterranean Sea. The clear blue water was a sight that I’ll never forget. It stretched for miles and miles, all calm and soothing. Our new home was a small wooden shack. Dad rented it from the department of newcomers. One large room with a kitchen corner, the bathroom was outside and so was the shower with its kerosene water heater called “Primus”.
“We won’t stay here long,” dad promised, “the department of newcomers promised me a two-bedroom unit as soon as one becomes available.”
You see, we were very lucky, life wasn’t easy in Israel. The war in Sinai was just over and it was very difficult to find a job. Dad lucked up finding the job he did, polishing Diamonds. The food raisons were skimpy, Mom had a privilege – she was nursing a baby, so she got a bit more than most people. We were allowed to buy two eggs per day, half a chicken per week and a quart of milk each day. There were no limitations on fruit and vegetables, but they were expensive. Avi and I had to share an apple for dessert. I helped dad planting vegetables and watermelons in our back yard so we could have some more to eat in the summer. This was the best summer yet. I got to go to the beach every day with mom and Avi. We would play in the sand and in the shallow water until dad came and we would eat tuna sandwiches for dinner at the beach while sitting in the warm water looking at the sun setting in the west.
***
1958
Wedding
You remember my Uncle Rone? You know, the one that took me to Tel Aviv and gave me too much to eat, and you know what happened later. The one who took me to the beach and gave me my “white butt”. Uncle Ronny is my father's younger brother. Dad is the oldest, next in line is Aunt Rosette, Aunt Fortune, Uncle Ronny, and the youngest is Uncle Claud. Uncle Ronny is getting married. He is marrying my Aunt Claudine, or in Hebrew, Rachael, my mom's younger sister. Isn't it cool? Two brothers marring two sisters. Their kids are going to be like my brothers and sisters – more than just cousins.
Aunt Rachael is very beautiful. She is slim with big smiling eyes and long black hair that fall straight down her tall back. Aunt Rachael was a secretary for the union. Sometimes she took me to work with her. She lets me play with the paper clips, and I made long colorful necklaces, attaching the clips together, wrapping magazine paper around each one of them and gluing it together. This is a gift for Mom, I would say, and Aunt Rachael would answer, "and it is a very pretty gift."
I like to be with Aunt Rachel, and Aunt Rachael likes to be with me. We are good friends. When Mom was sick and I was little, before Avi was born, Aunt Rachael used to help me go to the bathroom. Now sometimes when she goes to the bathroom at work and I need to go too, she takes me to the ladies’ room with her. Obviously, she can't take me to the men's room.
I was with Mom and her older sister, Aunt Marie, in the ladies’ room helping Aunt Rachael get ready for the wedding. Mom would help her with the makeup, Aunt Marie would help her with the hair, and I would hold the hair pins and brush. Aunt Rachael looked so beautiful. Her long black hair was arranged like a tower on her head and long curls came down her soft cheek. Mom called those curls bottles, I don't know why, they didn't look anything like bottles.
"O, oh," said Aunt Rachel. "Can you believe this? All day I've been trying to go to the bathroom and couldn't. Now that I'm all dressed and made up, I must go, and I don't think I can hold it."
"It couldn't be so," Mom said. "What are you going to do?"
"We'll have to help her," Aunt Marie said. "You! Young boy. Go open the toilet's door and hold it open! “Ida," she said to my Mom, "hold the bottom of her dress on the left side. I'll hold the right. When I say go, we'll both pick up the dress above her head. Carefully, not to ruin the hair do. Claudine, you walk backward to the stall and do your thing."
"O.K." Aunt Rachael said, "I'm done. Now what do we do?"
Again it was Aunt Marie who came to the rescue.
"Up," she said. "Come forward. young boy!" She always called me that. "Pull a long strip of toilet paper and come over here. Give it to me!" she commanded when I looked at her, opening my eyes big, like asking, what am I going to do with it?
"Over here, hold this," she pointed to the dress where she was holding. I rushed to her with the paper and tried to hold the dress where she asked me, but she is much taller than me. I held the dress underneath her and the rest of it fell on my head covering practically all my body. "It's better that way" Mom said. "This way he can't see what is going on down there."
***
The Small Shacks
“It is time to move again” Mom Said. “But don't worry, we aren't moving far, just to the next street to a bigger shack.”
when we moved from Be'er Sheva we took a very small shack. It was a one room wooden shack covered with black tar sheets on the outside walls and tin roof to keep the rain off. We had a small out house where my dad had to pour lime every night and another out house where we showered. It had a small water tank placed on a tall pedestal with a special kerosene burner called “Primus”. Mom used to turn it on every afternoon, before dad would come from work so he could have a nice hot shower.
I will never forget how Mom would prepare for “Passover”. She would take all the kitchen tools outside so she can clean and “kosher” them for the holiday. Dipping them in boiling hot water she had placed yet, on another “Primus”. Even the kitchen table was left outside until she finished cleaning the room. Dinner we had to eat sitting on the floor when the food was placed on newspapers spread on the kitchen corner.
In the late spring Dad and I would go to the small back yard and plow the ground with a big shovel and sow watermelon seeds and pick them up in the summer. At the edge of the yard, we had wild growing spinach. It had small, yet thick and salty leaves from the salty wind blowing from the sea every evening. We would collect it and both Mom and Dad would spend a whole day making “pkeilah”. In fact, spinach grew wild all over the shore's cliffs. We would pick up the spinach every time we go down to the beach. During the summer around 5:00PM mom would make some tuna sandwiches for us and we would walk to the beach. we would play in the water in between the rocks where it was safe until Dad would come back from work and joined us until it got dark.
Now it was time to move, right after we picked the last watermelon. The new place was a little bigger shack. It had a living dining room, a bedroom, and the best of all, it didn't have an outhouse not for the toilet or the shower. Everything was in one place. No more walking in the rain or in the middle of the night to the outhouse.
We were the first shack on a short dirt street right on top of the cliffs of northern Netanya's beach. Next to us, facing north, lived the deaf and mute couple who taught me how to speak the sign language. Across from them lived the preschool assistant, Sarah, and her handicapped son Michael. He was 2 years older than me. Unfortunately, he was born in the back of a big pickup truck and fell on his head at the delivery time (that's what Mom told me). He remained deformed and couldn't really speak clearly. Yet he had a very good memory and was very happy to see me and enjoyed playing with us. Next to Sarah's house live beautiful Allegra. She had the last shack on our street. You could see the sea clearly right of her bedroom window. In her living room she set up a big chair and a big mirror in front of it with all kinds of bottles in front of it and many scissors. She was our neighborhood's hairdresser / barber / natural healer. I remember, how she came to our house once and tried to fix my stomachache by washing it with “enema”. Allegra became a good friend of my Mom and visited us a lot as well as we visited her. She had 2 kids, a little older than me. Interestingly they had the same names as my cousins Vivi and Inez and just the same, Vivi was big and strong, and Inez was very pretty.
In no time, I made friends in that street as well as the street next to us. I learned where the “makolet” - the small groceries' store was, and I was given the task to go buy the milk and bread every day. Every day, I would wait in line there next to the big sack of rough sea salt, grab a hand full of it and shove it in my mouth. No matter how much my stomach hurt afterward I kept on eating it every day until we moved the following summer to Neveh Shalom closer to downtown where Dad worked.
Itzik or as we called him, Gingi for his freckles and red hair, lived on the next street. He had his fifth birthday on the first Shabat afternoon after we moved to that bigger shack.
“Get dressed” Mom told me, “you are going to be late.” I wore my new white shirt, blue shorts, and my new sandals. This was the first birthday I was ever invited to. I Didn't know what to expect.
“Come help me wrap this little gift” Mom called me as soon as I was dressed. “It is a nice bar of chocolate.” It was made by the new Israeli chocolate factory – Elit, “So don't eat it on the way.”
“I won't” I answered, “I don't like this kind, I line the dark chocolate better.”
We got to play at the party, and I saw how Gingi blew the candles with his eyes closed. I met new friends who were going to join me at the preschool the following year. Even Michael was there with his mom assisting him. It was a start of nice friendship that lasted for many years to come.
***
