Now that you’ve had a chance to settle in…..

I know what you’re about to ask me. Do I feel better about the move now than I did before?

Well, are you glad that it happened?

Yes and no. How’s that for a definite answer? There are things that I like and things I don’t like. Which is what you might expect. But I do feel I’ve gone from the ‘this is where I’m staying’ phase to ‘this is where I’m living,’ if you get the distinction.

There’s no going back…

There’s no going back…

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Read more: The Dreaded ‘M’ Word — Part 24

For many of us, putting up pictures on our walls is a defining moment. Now we really do live here. Some people decorate their space with family albums; others use ‘Jewish’ art. I’m fortunate. I have plenty of original paintings, prints, and photographs done by my late sister, my sister-in-law, Natania, and assorted other folks. Oh, and my own modest efforts. Plus the vintage sepia print done by somebody in Tiberias in the 1880’s, which we bought in Bloomingdales, a NYC department store, of all places.

You might assume that hanging the same artwork we had on the walls before would be a walk in the park for me. I’ve certainly done it before – quite often, in fact. I’ve hung my own exhibits; helped others do the same. But I’m getting older. Brian, come on over and give me a hand. The one thing he couldn’t do was help me decide what to put where. He would come; he would go; I would change my mind and rearrange everything. But after three sessions, we were more or less done, and I could find other things to worry about. But now at least we could make a to-do list, and if most of what we needed to do didn’t get done before Pesach, so be it.

Or so we thought. The moral being, you never know what worries are lurking in the dark shadows, waiting to ambush you at the most inopportune moments. For example… Our friends The Levines were going to The States for six weeks, going on two music cruises and then doing a sivuv hither and yon from Florida to Texas to Connecticut to visit all manner of other Levines, before returning to The Land the week before the Hag. They would leave their Mitsubishi SUV with us, and we (at least, Barbara) would start it every few days to keep the battery alive and well. At least that was the plan. But you KNOW something was going to go wrong because something (or better still, ‘somethings’) had to.

First potential for catastrophe: would Richard Levine make it there and back in one piece, given his propensity for doing battle with gravity and, of course, losing? No he would not. He tripped along the way, cracking a rib and suffering a concussion. Hence our friends returned two weeks earlier than planned.

Second potential for catastrophe: would their car suffer from rejection (being left with strangers) and stop working? You know the answer – if you’ve been paying attention. Barbara went out one day, and the car wouldn’t start. OK, there’s a battery pack. Call our friend Yoni the electrician to come and help. Except the battery pack was as dead as the battery it was supposed to start. Yoni came back that afternoon with jumper cables and got the job done.

Is that all there is to the story? Don’t be silly. Of course not.

By the next morning, the SUV had apparently again forgotten its manners. By this time, Barbara had obtained two important pieces of information: the mechanic that most of our friends with wheels use and information about Yedidim, an organization of volunteers who come and start your car, believe it or not, free of charge. One of their volunteers (one of three females among hundreds of guys) raced over and, using her battery pack – properly charged of course – got the Mitsubishi going. Whereupon Barbara and friend Ezra drove the car down to a garage in the industrial area for Ayal to put in a new battery.

And that was that?

 Foolish person, you. Barbara went out the next morning and…

Don’t tell me; the car wouldn’t start.

Why would you think otherwise? Of course it didn’t start. Barbara called the same service, and this time a fellow showed up. As I understand it, he jiggled some wires somewhere, and the car sprang into action. At least until the next morning when the car again failed to deliver. Now, someone might be thinking, why didn’t Barbara just call up this Ayal person and tell him to get his rear end in gear. Let him get the car, bring it down to his garage and figure what was wrong. Except that Ayal doesn’t make ‘house calls.’

What do you mean ‘he doesn’t make house calls.’

He doesn’t have a tow truck; you have to bring your vehicle to him.

If you could have driven the car to him, you wouldn’t have needed him in the first place.

True enough. But that’s the way things stood. This was a Thursday morning, and The Levines were due back the next morning, which incidentally was the Friday when the clocks were advanced one hour, so that when the plane landed at 5:30AM summer time, it felt like 4:30 (gasp!). We figured we’d wait for them to show up at our doorstep, and we would take collective action on Sunday. Let’s at least bring their unresponsive battery pack into our apartment and charge it with good old-fashioned Israeli electricity.

Shabbat came and left – as it always does. Sunday morning, and we were all rarin’ to go. We would start the car with the newly charged battery pack and drive it down to Ayal’s garage. He would figure out what was wrong, take care of it, and The Levines would be on their way, back to their refuge atop their mountain. They had been gone long enough; time to go HOME. They had things to do, and we were hoping to get a head start on our Pesach preparations. We’re not getting any younger or more energetic. A little bit every day, we figured, and we’d get everything done in time. At least that was the plan or what we thought was the plan. Just to be on the safe side, we called up the garage to tell them we were on the way. Sorry, we’re closed until Wed. It was Eid al-Fitr, the three-day Muslim holiday that ends Ramadan. Undeterred, Richard called up the Mitsubishi dealer in Jerusalem. They too were closed. It seems that most of the employees in both establishments – and all similar places of business in these parts – are of the Islamic persuasion and take these matters quite seriously.

Well, that put a damper on things. Nothing to do but to stay put and enjoy each other’s company. And wait until Wednesday. Except that Ayal decided to somehow open up on Tuesday with his less-than-complete staff. OK, let’s do it! Richard and Barbara got the Mitsubishi started, brought it down to Mishor Adumim, and persuaded Ayal to work on the car immediately, instead of the next day, as he had intended.

Now this is going to shock you. The battery that Ayal installed the week before was…. (drum roll, please) defective. There had been suppositions that the car’s less than stellar performance was caused by a recalcitrant alternator or something else in the car’s advanced electrical system, but Ayal ran every diagnostic test he could, and there was nothing else wrong with the car.

How could there be something wrong with a brand-new battery?

Have you been paying attention these last 32,000 words? How could there be something wrong, for example, with the brand-new compressor for our mazgan? How could there not be something wrong with the….? Never mind; you get the idea.

Trust, but verify. Just to make certain that their Mitsubishi had learned its lesson, The Levines waited until Wed. morning to make their departure. And yes, the car has been on its best behavior ever since, or so we’re told.

Now that we had the apartment to ourselves, we could focus (or better, Barbara could focus; I only focus with a camera) on the task at hand, getting ready for Pesach, but you all know what that entails. One of my responsibilities was to obtain KLP chocolate bars at the shuk – 18 of them – so Barbara could make her highly anticipated Pesach cakes. (Do I buy the Lindt at 20NIS apiece or the Schmerling at 17 a pop? We had already sampled the offerings from our supermarket and found them all lacking. Decisions, decisions…)

And then it was the day before the Hag, and we were preparing as best we could. There would be people staying with us and others joining us for a meal. (We would be with the Aarons for the Seder, as we had done the last seventeen year.) The apartment was as clean as it was going to be. I had done as much cooking as strength would allow. Barbara was melting eight bars of chocolate to use as a glaze for her highly anticipated Pesach cakes when….. Why is there smoke coming out of our microwave?

Fred, would you taste the chocolate? Does it seem off to you? I’ve never turned down an offer to act as a sampler, so I willing complied. Eight times seventeen, that’s 136NIS down the drain. Tastes like burnt microwave. That’s so awful that, even if I were starving, I would pass… I guess I know what we’re buying sometime on Monday once Lior reopens.

Barbara, being the compulsive type, immediately headed to the mall to get some kind of dessert to share at our meals. She didn’t have time to buy another kiddush cup for Pesach, after smashing the one we had. But misery loves company. The Levines wound up at the last minute not having a Seder to go to, and then their refrigerator gave up the ghost right before the last day of the Hag. Why does this always happen…? Remember, it can always get worse, a sobering thought at best. So be prepared; you’ve been warned. And stay put where you are. That’s my best advice