That was actually a really nice cigarette. Haven’t smoked since, though. Revolting habit.
Today and yesterday, the heat returned. Thirty degrees at eight-thirty in the morning; thirty-five or six (or so the thermometer in my car claims) by the time I walk into a wall of running, shouting, ball-kicking, hyperactive children fleeing school at 1.30pm. I gather my lambs and shepherd them towards the car whilst skillfully avoiding the pitfalls of the pizza parlour and the crap falafel across the road, the wine shop that runs a nifty sideline in ice-creams, penny sweets and their personal favourites: gobstoppers, and the hot-chocolate dispensing machine that combines a watery brown cocoa-reminiscent liquid with ten spoons of sugar and is available right next to Tamar's classroom. They wail, they request, they plead but I am firm. No way Joses. Just to arrive at the car without a sugar rush involved is a relief. Phew. And trust me, we don’t always succeed.
Modern English kids are oblivious to the unbounding joy we had of stuffing our little mouths with sugar in all its various boiled, coloured, sherberted multi-shaped and layered, twisted, bon-bonned and undoubtedly poisonous forms. I say ‘we’ but our Dad was anti-sugar long before the rest of the world even knew it was in everything, so sis and I relied on pocket-money days, packs of sweets from Aunty Ann and Grandma’s all-too-soon-ending ‘Season’s Greetings’ sized tin of Quality Street. My kids’ generation know of ‘only one’ and ‘only at weekends’ and at their birthday parties, when I stood holding out a tray of goodies, their friends would take one and look at me, clutching it, terrified, until I said – ‘it’s ok; take a few,’ and then their eyes would pop with forbidden greed and they’d need no further cadjoling. Mothers tut and shake their heads if a birthday party bestows trays of chocolates on the table, a mini-chocolate sellotaped onto the going home present of a book AND there was cake. ‘It’s too much; too much.’ No colourings or E numbers get a look in.
Dentists in England are free for children until the age of sixteen. I took all of my lambs for dental check-ups and eye tests before we left a year ago. Our beautiful, sweet Indian dentist poked their molars with her little pick axe thing, nodded that all was well, I signed the forms on the counter and I was out, feeling very pleased with my mothering skills thus far.
Maayan had a pain in her lower right molar two weeks ago and a trip to the dentist and 250 shekels (35 quid) later foretold tales of woe. She needed a crown, seven fillings (yes, seven, within a year – welcome, little children, to the sugar, colourings, preservatives and sheer volume of consumption of the average Israeli kid) and some weird slime dumped on to strengthen the whatever in her teeth. Five hunderd pounds worth of work, which is 4300 shekels, which takes far, far longer to earn than five hundred quid, let me tell you. It’s like a year’s salary or something.
My obvious thought were: are English dentists doing shoddy work because the NHS doesn’t pay them enough for kids, or are Israeli dentists milking us by over-efficently finding every possible pin-prick of a hole they don’t really need to fill in order to gather in the bucks?
Anyway, we went this morning and My-My is the proud owner of a metal tooth and enjoyed the weirdness of Numb Mouth for the first time. Her friend at school peered into her gob, said ‘Mazal Tov’ and passed her a sour stick to celebrate.
The others need the dentist too. So do I.
I’m not brave enough for this.
Oh, before I go and cry, I read Ecclesiastes (Chapter 3) today, which mentions the same kind of time thing as the Tao does:
'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die;
...A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A TIME TO KEEP SILENT AND A TIME TO SPEAK'
(which is poignant as I wrote yesterday about not being able to promise anything except that I have no idea at all what is promise-able and what isn't. I'm confused. That I promise you).
I checked up who came first - King Solomon or Lao Tzu, because people came from all over the world to hear the wisdom of Solomon. But according to Wikipedia, the source of all absolute truth on the web if not on earth, Lao Tzu lived apporoximately 600 years BCE and scholars estimate the writing of Kohelet to be around 250 years BCE. Interesting. Did they know of each other's work, or is it just kind of obvious that there are times for things?
I just bought a book (Thanks, Dad, for posting the three of them to me) on the links between two of the earth's oldest cultures -Chinese and Jewish - as a present for my friend but I may allow myself to read just a bit of it to see if there's mention of this.
Anyway.
There is a time to go and do other stuff and this is it.
1 comment:
I love hearing about your sweet teeth and am so pleased to see you're talking to people this way - and having a cup of tea while doing so. I'm up late after Guy has gone to sleep after a week of post-hurricane strangeness without power - 7 days total. We sat outside, talked, smoked and drank wine, cooked what we had on the grill and listened to music from the xm radio plugged into our neighbor's outdoor electric source - she had power the day after the storm and it took us 7 days to get ours. Thank god we have a gas stove and water heater! Most of the city still has no power. I sat still more than I have in years. All is in disarray in the area. Piles of debris on every curb and trees down into the middle of houses and across streets. The day after the storm - a week ago today - neighbors were out with chainsaws and rakes and cutters and ladders trying to help each other clear the streets and houses of downed trees. I loved the way we all helped each other and met neighbors we've seen come and go for years, but have never had a conversation with. Today when we finally woke up with power, it was a day of cleaning. Guy and Hannah's boyfriend, Will, in the yard bagging up all the debris on the curb for the trash men and me and Hannah in the house. She put everything back into the refrigerator, which had been off for a week and clean and empty for 6 days - organized all. I cleaned every floor. I've never been so happy to vacuum and mop. All that is done and laundry's being done - all was damp and debris had been tracked in the house. I swept constantly, but it wasn't really so you could walk without getting your feet dirty. Now all is going to get back to normal - we hope. Tomorrow dusting and work. I haven't worked in 8 days - no internet and no power made me quite different - almost lethargic - and content to sleep late and sit out on the deck with coffee and talk. After 3 days we began to get newspapers again and we could see the damage and really know how bad it is. And all this coupled with the financial crisis we're having in this country has made it almost feel like all our structures and things we count on are breaking down. Because they are. Very strange times. I think I should go to bed soon. Getting the last load out of the dryer and heading to the shower. Talk to me.
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