It's A Small World

i watched the oliver stone movie,''twin towers" last night at 1:00 a.m. i thought it was pretty good. it's been eight years already and i'm sure that we can all remember that day very well. we were in our new house unpacking the lift. zvi and dad were sitting on the couch, that we had bought from the previous owner, and were watching a movie on the new dvd that we had just purchased. mom and i were busy in the kitchen unpacking boxes and putting away all the dishes and pots and pans. i can't be sure, but i think that the movie might have been "gladiator". all i remember is that the speakers were blasting and i could hear every sound and action movement in dolby in the kitchen. we hadn't moved in yet and we didn't have a refrigerator. we came each day and unpacked for a few hours before we would officially, move in. dad who was 'labelled' with alzheimer's, was still pretty easy going in those days. he loved watching movies and sports and could still follow a story plot and a game back then. zvi was delighted to have a television, and dvd. so delighted, as a matter of fact, that he ran away from yeshiva and became a high school drop out, shortly after we moved into the new house. mom was in her prime too, putting away her housewares and chatchkas. we were all, so much looking forward to our new life together. three generations living in one house. mom decided that she and dad and zvi would live on the main floor. she thought that it would be better for me to have a bedroom downstairs. i guess she reasoned that a teenage boy and his mom needed separate floors. i didn't make any waves and i acquiesced to her wishes. zvi painted his room royal blue and he and mom went to the home depot in carmiel to buy light fixtures and new sheets. mom and dad had the master bedroom with a private bathroom and lovely porch overlooking the garden with a view of lake kinneret. they would sit out there and enjoy the sun and dad would croon the best of sinatra. the neighbors knew his voice for blocks away. mom enjoyed sitting on her porch until the day that she died. i use it now to dry our laundry. i've moved in all of my clothes but i still sleep on the small couch in the television out cove every night. there is still a sign on the bedroom door, that reads, "in this room live in happiness, jeanette and daniel gleich". zvi made it up on the new computer that we bought for the new house. i haven't been able to take it down. so in some ways it's my room but it really isn't. i moved in my son's teenage one and a half sized bed so that cookie and cloey and i could sleep comfortably, but we're all still snuggling up on the t.v. couch. our household was never, ever, quiet. we had a teenage boy at the height of his testosterone, a menopausal middle aged shrieking mother, a demented elderly man who liked to jabber, a squawking parrot and two small barking dogs. phone calls were kind of tricky. i always, teased mom that while zvi and i had too many hormones, she didn't have any hormones at all. anyway, at about 6:30 p.m. on september 11th, eight years ago, we were all really hungry and decided to go to town and catch a bite to eat. in the fall and wintertime in zefat, the restaurants, pizzerias, and felafel stands all close around 8:00 p.m. so we were getting a bit concerned that everything in town might be ready to close. the cab driver mentioned hearing something about a plane that had crashed into the tallest building in new york. i figured that it had to be a small commuter plane that accidentally flew too close to the trade towers. i absolutely, couldn't get my head around what i saw on the television at the restaurant in town. the locals here in zefat were pretty nonplussed. only a small band of anglos were seemingly, getting excited. i was a new yorker and this really hit home even though i had been living in israel for 17 years. i once, used to sign up at an unemployment office on barrow street right next to the towers, once a week. i would always stop off at a certain pub restaurant on the main floor of the tower and spend a few hours drinking margaritas and hitting the juke box. i had previously worked on the 33rd floor in the tower at a lawyer's office for a few months. it was before they built the second tower. i know a family in zefat who's son was working at the pentagon and was killed on 9/11. his father is a convert to judaism and is very devout. the young man, himself, started learning about judaism and started keeping some of the mitzvot. i think that he was interested in converting, also. zefat seems so far away from the rest of the world but in reality, its' a small world.