I started this blog based on a conversation with Aunt Lady (or was the conversation with Uncle Man himself?), who said that Uncle Man found journals kept by someone in his family who had moved to America from Europe, and that was pretty durned nifty. So with no arm-twisting at all, I decided to do something similar and Document my Immigration for Posterity. Granted, this blog is written in my native language, not the language of my descendants, but whatever. I like being able to declaim into the void and feel all cool because my family reads my stuff.
That being said, I feel like I
really should write more about COVID-19. Here's an important point for the future grandkids who need to interview a relative for a Oral History project for school: very few people call it COVID-19, and certainly not SARS-COV-2-WHATEVER. We call it coronavirus, or more usually, corona. I've seen (on "social media" which is what we did before you were born, yes saw not heard, it's called "posting") one or two people refer to it as "the machala" which is way too cancerous. The other important note for future kiddos is I am Total Nerd (do you still have those when you live?), so I love
xkcd.
The obligatory stuff for your Oral History project? (Yes, I'm writing stuff down for Oral History. Whatever.) The human element of a historic event! Over the course of Israel's lockdown, here are the main lockdown-related feelings I've had so far: worry, panic, anxiety, faith, calm, despair-masquerading-as-faith, trust, irritation, anger, impatience. Oh, also intermittent cabin fever. Had I written this blog in real-time, you would have gotten more details, but y'know what, future descendants who will not read a foreign-language document for an Oral History project? Dealing with work and your parent/uncles is kinda time-consuming. Even if Husbinator did/does most of the work with the kiddos. Speaking of, homeschooling kids in a foreign language is a little extra challenging, but we managed just fine until now. However, I do see a noticeable weakening in both FF's Hebrew and my Hebrew. His has mostly rebounded since going back to preschool this past week-and-a-half, and hopefully mine will bounce back eventually.
Oh, and for posterity: our family did not run out of toilet paper. Though we did end up buying an extra pack or two. Yes, there really was a global panic over the residential toilet paper supply. Future people,
this is a great explanation of what actually
caused The Great Toilet Paper Panic. Current People, I don't recommend reading that article: it's scary. Oh, and speaking of shortages and posterity, there was a straight-up egg shortage in Israel before Pesach. Thank G-d, we got all of the eggs we needed (
ninety for a single week, plus a couple so as to not get down to the last egg: go figure) without having to stand in line, but holy smokes. There were absolutely people standing in line for hours and scouring the city in search of eggs.
Also, I see the following notes I jotted down shortly after Pesach:
Husbinator taught FF the Ma Nishtana, complete with awesome hand motions, and he also took BSM to buy a hagaddah (as I promised BSM we would when I convinced him before Purim to buy a cheap megillah that had exactly what he wanted instead of a megillah that was three times the price with little added benefit) a day or two before book stored were shut down.
Oh, and there was a total country-wide lockdown for the seder: everyone was supposed to stay in their own home from 3 pm Erev Pesach until the next morning. As a sort of consolation thingy, Rechovot (the whole country?) declared 8 pm to be "Porch Ma Nishtana Time" whereat everyone took a seder break to go to their porches and sing Ma Nishtana. That was actually fun.
And here are the real brass tacks for me personally: I had some real let-down when nothing crazy happened around Pesach time. I honestly believed that some obvious end-of-times goodness was going to happen. And it wasn't just me: I had more than one conversation with random strangers before Pesach who were also expecting Something Big. Weeks later, I realized that it's a bit silly to expect Awesomeness without Personal Responsibility and Change.
What else, O Posterity? Ah, my Lockdown Song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSAZnYdvVak. I just found that version tonight, the one I had been listening to is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVKoNZloRvQ, and for the record, the last verse is missing from that version. So.
And now onto my next post, which is the one I really wanted to write when I sat down tonight!
