girl in her married bliss with apologies to edna o'brien
First published in 1964, Girls in their Married Bliss is a romp of a read about two young Irish lasses, Kate and Baba in search of life and love. My mother gave it to me as a birthday present when I was about 14. I remember thinking at the time that it seemed like a rather grown up book to give to a girl of my age. Still I read - nay devoured - the book and when I came to write this blog, the title of O'Brien's coming of age story leaped to the forefront of my mind for some reason.
An awful lot has happened since I last blogged. Most significantly, I got married!
Like most weddings, it was a stressful lead up to the big day. The wedding planning itself was actually very smooth and not much (if anything) went wrong. For us, the most stressful thing was monitoring the situation of Doron's mother, who is very ill with cancer. It was a bit touch and go and most weekends for a couple of months before the wedding were spent in the emergency ward of Hadassah Ein Karem hospital.
Thank God she was able to be with us for the wedding, and she was even well enough to walk down the aisle together with my mother to accompany me to the chuppah.
With my mother and Doron's mother
Me and DoronAlthough a bit on the cool side, we decided to have the chuppah on the outdoor terrace with the spectacular views of the Old City framing our canopy. I distinctly remember feeling like I was in a dream - the whole thing just didn't feel real to me.
A lot of my married friends warned me in advance to soak it all in and savour every moment because in a flash it is all over and the months of build up and preparation are gone. They were right. At the end of the night as we and the last of our guests sat at the only remaining table in the room we watched as the staff cleaned up around us, dismantling what only an hour or so earlier had been our beautiful reception and the two girls in the corner putting together the table decorations for tomorrow's wedding...
Buda and Pest with the beautiful Danube in the middleI like to think of Budapest as a grand old dame who, with a little bit of cosmetic surgery, could look a million bucks. All around you, Budapest is filled with stunning architecture and with the backdrop of the Danube River, what more could you ask for? Sadly too much of this city has sunk into disrepair and it's incredibly sad to see such beautiful buildings slowly decay away. One hopes that the Hungarian government will address this problem sooner rather than later and start an active campaign to restore many of Budapest's most important buildings and monuments.
Doron and I returned to Israel just in time for Pesach (Passover) and we spent the holiday with my mother, brother and mother's cousins in Omer, which is near Beersheva in the south of Israel. A year ago I spent Pesach with the same relatives, except a year ago I was decidedly single and never in a million years would I have believed that one year later I would be sitting at the seder table with my mother, brother and... husband!
My mum and brother left during the middle of the Pesach break and as we said goodbye to them I was struck by the fact that although I felt incredibly sad that they were going, I did not feel alone, as I had a year ago when my mother was last visiting Israel. There is no doubt that the hardest part about making aliyah is leaving your family behind. Australia especially, is ridiculously far away. As my husband and I waved goodbye it really hit me that here I was, starting a whole new chapter of my life.
My mum and brother had a stopover in Hong Kong before flying back to Melbourne. For my brother especially, it was a major trip down memory lane as it has been some 13 years since he was last there. As I looked through the photo albums he was uploading to Facebook I was overwhelmed with nostalgia for a city that had been my birthplace and home for the first 23 years of my life, and still the city I have lived in longer than any other place in the world.
Was HK really that built up? Was the sky always that depressing shade of grey? Did my high school always look like a prison? With each photo, I was transported back in time to what I truly perceive was another life altogether. My primary school, our local supermarket, the neighbourhood park where we would get up to no good after school and saddest of all, our home for more than ten years, 40 Oxford Road, Kowloon Tong, which is now a hideous block of apartments, with no sign whatsoever of the gorgeous post-war low-rise apartment building which had proudly stood there previously.
I am glad my brother was able to make the journey back in time and take all those photos, but to be honest, I don't think I could do it. The HK I remember is no longer there. Certainly, bits of it remain - certain landmarks, even people (some of whom could be mistaken for landmarks!) but the essence of that place, that crazy city I grew up in, is no longer. It is a strange sensation indeed to know that you cannot revisit the site of your youth because it was destroyed, dismantled, built over, reclaimed and relabeled.
From Hong Kong, to Belfast, to Melbourne, to Singapore, to Sydney and now finally, Israel. What a strange journey I have taken and here I am living in Jerusalem with my gorgeous husband and slightly psychotic cat. If anyone had told me all those years ago when I was growing up in HK that I would end up living in Israel and marrying an Israeli, I would have died laughing, so unpredictable my ending up here has been.
I stopped momentarily to write this blog as I heard the siren ring out across the city for Yom HaZikaron, the memorial day for soldiers and all those who have lost their lives in terrorist attacks in Israel. The siren itself is haunting and it is impossible not to feel deep sadness as we reflect on this country which we love so much and yet causes us so much pain.
As the sun sets tonight, grief will transform to joy and celebration as Israel celebrates Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day) and its 60th anniversary. How Israelis make the psychological transformation I still don't fully understand, but I guess given I am one of them now, I somehow just make the mental leap like everyone else. It is a very tough thing to do, but the cross-over between the two is absolutely deliberate. We must never forget or take for granted how hard it was to fight for this land. Sadly, for now, our status as a fully recognised independent country is not a matter for the history books, it is still our front page news.
Chag sameach everyone and much love from Jerusalem.