Thread by @emilylhauser, For reasons I'm not clear on, I present to you:The Week That [...]

For reasons I'm not clear on, I present to you:
The Week That Was for me, from 2/27 to yesterday 3/5. Maybe so you can marvel at it with me.

•In the wee hours of 2/27 we got the call that my MIL (in Jerusalem) had died (thank you for your condolences; she was indeed very loved)

•Husband & I spend 2/27 a.m. getting flights + shopping for necessaries
•I spend 2/27 p.m. gathering other necessaries & breaking the news to my mom, who loved my MIL a lot
•2/28, we + daughter take off
•Sat 2/29 a.m. land Tel Aviv, where we’re informed

that our 16.5 yo daughter is an army deserter & we need to take her to the army’s induction base; tell authorities that though she's also Israeli she lives in the US; they tell us we have fix it BEFORE SHE CAN LEAVE THE COUNTRY – an event scheduled for the MORNING of Mon 3/2

•Later that a.m. arrive Jerusalem, spend day w family; learn the candidate who’s campaign I've been supporting in the manner of a calling/third job has been thrashed in South Carolina
•3/1 a.m. bury husband’s beloved mother/ daughter’s beloved grandmother next to his father

•3/1 p.m. shiva starts, which is lovely & sad
•Also 3/1 p.m., family member in-the-know tries to help us resolve daughter’s issue on the phone, explain re: MIL’s death; I can hear my (grieving) husband’s voice rising as he says, roughly, “with the push of a button, you can see

exactly how often she’s actually been in the country.” Them: we shouldve gotten her military waiver “as soon as she turned 16” or “before she got on the flight” 48 hrs prior (which, you will recall, she did in order to attend a funeral.) Too bad – we still have to go to the base.

•3/2 6:15 a.m. drive to induction base (“The Bakum” in Israeli parlance)
•7:40 arrive The Bakum, told daughter (whose Hebrew is not remotely fluent) has to enter the base & sort it out alone
•7:45 watch daughter through bars as she gets in line to walk into The Bakum

•8:00 receive text from daughter: soldier in charge of Foreigners Division is late
•8:10 receive text: daughter was required to provide number for family inside Israel; huzzah, her aunt had given us her cell number to access a store’s frequent-buyer club the day previous!

•8:20 daughter emerges, w necessary waiver, & news that the 18/19 yo soldier who was late & required a phone number, DID NOT SPEAK SUFFICIENT ENGLISH TO CONDUCT THIS EXCHANGE & daughter was forced to conduct it in Hebrew. (Which she did – she is the hero in this whole story.)

•8:30 race to airport – daughter’s flight has been delayed – no cancelled! We reschedule, maybe, for one of two flights much later; we’ll have to come back early to see which one she’s on.
•9:15 I look at my kid & think “this is a kid who need s a little break.”

•She loves the sea, but we had no intention of going to Tel Aviv during the shiva, but it was at that point 20 min away, so I said: “Right. We’re going to the boardwalk to get breakfast & watch the waves.”
•OH HEY DID I MENTION THAT MONDAY WAS ALSO THE DAY OF ISRAEL’S ELECTIONS

•Husband & I (both OG leftists) had decided that after dropping daughter at airport we'd return to Jslm to return to shiva but also vote in complicated “absentee” fashion at a Jslm polling place; since we were going to be in Tel Aviv, we could go to our old polling place.

•So I *also* say: “Let's go ahead & vote at our own polling place.”
•10:00 arrive TLV, find lovely spot to eat, have wonderful hour at the sea that we all, in fact, adore
•11:30-ish, arrive polling place, they allow daughter to observe voting process

(which is v different from the US, so it was v cool they let us do that), we both vote for Arab Joint List in effort to serve our fellow citizens who are so badly treated
•General wandering in old neighborhood; back on highway to Jslm @ 1 p.m.
•2:00 arrive Jslm, return to shiva

•8 p.m. leave for airport w daughter; put her on plane ~10 p.m.
•OH HEY DID I MENTION THAT THIS WHOLE TIME, FROM 2/27 ON, I WAS QUIETLY PITCHING MY PIECE ABOUT CASTRO’S TIE & THEN PREPARING IT FOR SELF-PUB W/ THE INTENT OF HITTING “PUBLISH” IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT

•7:45 p.m., my phone launches a software update that crashes my phone
•8-9:00, loving & delightful husband & daughter avail me of their phones in car so that I can salvage my plan & give the essay a little bit of the love it deserves
•10:00 phone is working but v low battery

•DID I MENTION I FORGOT MY CHARGER IN JSLM; my (again: grieving!) husband sits v patiently as I push the piece as hard as I can until phone actually dies
•11:00 arrive Jslm hotel; plug in phone & Chromebook, take shower, stay up until 2:45 a.m. promoting own essay

•3/3 later in the a.m. return to shiva (which as a DIL, involves for me a lot of collecting of dishes & plating of food etc & I wish I could've done more)
•In the course of the day, take a walk around neighborhood for maybe last time, grab coffee w/ beloved SIL, greet visitors

hear/tell stories, pack my bags
•3/3 8 p.m. part ways w/ grieving family, drive to airport, part ways w/ grieving husband, board plane
•Flight to Newark: Pushed against wall of plane by otherwise nice man who took up fully a third of my seat, elbow into my waist, entire flight

•Arrival Newark (date? time? who knows?) – immigration, collect suitcase, customs, re-check bag, race for second flight, make it as boarding nears completion
•Flight to Chicago: EMPTY SEAT NEXT TO ME GOD IS GREAT; learn that the candidate who’s campaign I have been supporting

in the manner of a calling or third job has been thrashed at the polls; new mourning process begins
•3/4 9:30 a.m. arrive home
•10:00 am receive text from heroic daughter; overwhelmed with head-splitting exhaustion, asks me to pick her up from school. Sure.

•(I may have been less than patient at this juncture; we will draw a veil)
•Somehow get through endless day of attempting to continue to support my work, my candidate, my daughter, watch a bunch of NextGen, 8:00 pm head on pillow, asleep

•3/5 9:00 a.m., wearing the dress in which I met Warren, arrive at early-voting location to cast my vote for the best candidate of my lifetime
•9:30 a.m. emerge from polling place to discover Warren has withdrawn from the race
•9:31 a.m. – midnight: Cry

•11:30 – 1:30: write 850 words about the end of the Warren campaign
•1:31 p.m. – midnight: Publicly mourn, share love with those who have been on this journey, promote my work, find out Joaquin Castro likes what I wrote about his brother, cry, cry, cry. Fall into bed.

And that was The Week That Was.

Y'all. I'm tired.

WAIT I FORGOT TO MENTION THE HEINOUS OUTCOME OF THE ISRAELI ELECTIONS ON MONDAY NIGHT but the party we voted for gained seats in the Knesset, so maybe, just maybe, the citizens Israel routinely denigrates will help save the country from itself. *fingers crossed*

Latest Threads Unrolled: