Adventures Continued

Here I sit, at my desk, back in the US of A, in the twilight zone of jetlag, caught between cultures, and on top of it, preparing for yet another adventure.  At the beginning of June I am off to Southwest, and Southern Africa!

My last week in Germany and Israel was super intense.  On the morning of Holocaust Memorial Day I took the train to the Grunewald Station, and went to Track 17.  This is in an elegant area of Berlin - beautiful homes and embassies are situated here.  It is from Track 17 that the Jews and other undesirables; Gypsies, homosexuals, were rounded up and put in cattle cars and sent to their final destination.  I find it difficult to put into words the feelings I experienced there. I met an Israeli couple, and we both just looked at each other and shrugged. She said a word in Hebrew to me 'hallucination.' That says it all.

Then I went to my nephew and his family. His daughters are in a "Wald Kindergarten." A forest kindergarten. That Friday night Spring was celebrated.  We all went to the lush and glowing green forest where the men brought in a maypole, and the women collected wildflowers and there was a symbolic wedding, and we danced around the maypole, all singing to the earth mother.  Another hallucination - I felt I was in a Midsummer Night's Dream.  Magical.

Then back to Israel to Memorial Day.  On the eve of Memorial Day we attended a collective ceremony in Hayarkon Garden in Tel Aviv.  Collective - the shared experience of Jews and Palestinians all caught in this web of sadness and pain, yet still daring to hope.

And the next day - on the kibbutz - our shared sorrow.  After the ceremony we (kibbutz members and friends) went to the home of a member. We sat outside on the balcony, under the shade of a plane tree, overlooking the Jezreel Valley.  A patchwork of greens, gold, platinum.  Mt. Tabor always there, always present.  And we spoke, each one of us, of how we first heard the news of our loved ones' deaths. We all remember each and every detail - and as we all said, the passage of time never eases our pain.  Somehow it seems to be more diffcult with each passing year, a bottomless pit of grief. But it felt very good to talk about it, and laugh, and to bask in the warmth of caring and love.

And life goes on - new adventures await.