The sun sets a little earlier each day. The path outside my front door is carpeted in fading pink hibiscus flowers. I see humming birds dip their graceful curving finely pointed beaks into the feeder more frequently. The wind rustles through trees, and leaves begin to fall. I feel a chill in the morning and evening. It has a different timbre to it from the chill of foggy summer mornings and evenings. I am knitting again.
The seasons are changing, and inevitably, I am reminded of the 6th of October 1973, when my life, and many countless lives, were changed forever.
A group of us were gathered on the lawn of the swimming pool. It was Yom Kipur, and on the kibbutz noone fasted. It was a beautiful cloudless Saturday. The lawns were browning, autumn flowers had appeared. And then, at two o-clock two mirage jets shrieked overhead. "Strange," we observed, on Yom Kipur? And then David Solomon, on his bike, skidded to a stop alongside us. He held a transistor to his ear. "There is a war," he said. "Israel has been attacked."
And so, on that lovely peaceful fall day everything changed. And now for me, every time I experience the signs and changes that herald the fall, I also remember that day, that war, and how life changed.
