This One's For You!

it is midnite in the holy city of zefat in the holy land of israel. but it is only 2:00p.m. in L.A and i want to wish my sister ann, a happy birthday and mazel tov! the poor woman got woken up very early this morning by friends who remembered to call her on her birthday. last nite before i went to sleep i ran over to the fridge in a panic to check the calendar because i feared that i had missed her birthday. i was indeed, in luck. it was only the 13th and her birthday is on october 14th. i have probably missed several of her birthdays in the past few years and i always covered up my mistakes by calling on the hebrew date or at least telling her that i was waiting to call her on her hebrew birth date. it gets a bit sticky at this time of year with all these jewish holidays and the 10 hour time difference. it's kind of hard to always get it right. last year was the worst of our blunders. it was a milestone birthday. the big 60! and the poor thing had to call us up to remind us that it was her birthday. i felt useless. this year i really had the intention of beating her to the punch. i checked the time and calculated that it was only 8:00 a.m in sunny downtown L.A. and decided to wait a little while longer before i surprised her with calling her on her birthday. i think the real surprise here would be that i remembered her birthday and not so much the actual phone call because i do call her alot. in fact, i had called her the nite before to ask her if she was following my blog but only got her answering machine. she had left a message to say that she would be returning home very late that nite. so i just assumed that she might need more rest in the morning. my other sister who lives in zefat in the ancient section that was biblically canaan, always says that i make the wrong assumptions. last nite on a really old television law series, the district attorney said that when you assume you make an ass out of you and out of me. quite clever, i think. i wonder if that's also what my sister thinks. anyway, my sister in L.A. called me the first thing in the morning, her time,to let me know that she had gotten my message but had not yet seen the blog. her best friend soncie who is my number one follower, has kindly sent in some very nice comments. soncie dear, i do not think that bezek is either a hebrew or yiddish word. it is the name of the phone company monopoly here in the holy land. similarly, you have Ma Bell and Con Edison in the U.S.A although, i believe that big government tried to break up all the large monopolies back in the day. and the reason that i put a block on my computer was that i simply got tired of seeing images of the male sex organ popping up on the screen all the time. go figure! i have been a bezek customer since i got my phone about 18 years ago. it was after the event of the gulf war. we used to have a phone in the lobby of our apartment building which was once the absorption center of the jewish agency for new immigrants. and we would cue up to call my parents in brooklyn. when there was an influx of russian immigrants and it was taking way to long to line up, my parents generously paid for a phone line. in those days it was a small fortune. but if truth be told, my son who was quite the precocious lad, knew how to call america by heart and i am certain that the phone was just as much, if not more so, for his use too. i love you big sis, and i wish you a good sweet new year filled with lots of opportunities, good health and good parnasa, good friends and good times and i hope you will find a good man. oh by the way, before i sign off, guess what happened this evening. i ran to the next street to catch the last bus to get to the pharmacy by 9:00 p.m before they closed. new dad, zvi was feeling under the weather and came down to ask if i could buy him some cold tablets and some wanton soup at the thai take out restaurant. he complained bitterly that the homeopathic pills that i had given him in the morning had done nothing for him. he wanted real medicine and he needed it now! i bought the meds and i ordered the soup and i noticed that they also had sushi, zvi's favorite food in the world so i sprang for some.(sushi, was also the name of my beloved pincher dog who died a few years ago). my son eats seaweed like some people eat potato chips. anyway, when i came back from my humanitarian mission i ran up to see baby sahar. he had spent the day with the sephardi clan after going to the shuk.(the colorful local weekly market place). last nite his sephardi safta and saba came by to bring his baby bath back and safta miriam gave him his nightly bath. while he was lying on the changing table being undressed, he stared at her intently and you could feel their love bond. it was like that with my son and my mother from the very beginning too.i was aching inside for that same look from him. tonite, as gal was changing his diaper before he was to go to sleep, he managed to pee all over my face and hair covering with a steady stream of warm baby pish that felt like ambrosia. i laughed with glee. i was so delighted. i was in safta nirvana. i kissed the little pisher goodnite and happily came back downstairs to my blog. i wish you a good nite, big sis and i hope you know how much i love and value you. love, zelda