NOT KEEPING SCORE

Freelancing abroad in the Holy Land for 18 days

My landlady Margalit and her husband Jacob have decided to adopt me.

Everyday I come home from work, I find a basket of fruit at my front door, or homemade jam in my fridge, or a row of my freshly washed underwear hanging in a tidy little row along the clothes line.

I don’t question how she found my dirty underwear, I am just grateful for clean ones.

When I lived in San Francisco in my charming little Tenderknob apartment, most dinners were raw tofu with BBQ sauce, consumed in the company of myself while standing in front of the refrigerator, door propped open with a foot in the event I decided to add ketchup for dessert.

And whether it’s because when I work I forget how to employ the use of utensils, or old habits die hard and I rather enjoy eating hovering over the sink – I know not. But for several nights in a row in Israel I found myself alone in my flat, eating fruit jam straight out of the jar.

Where my family is concerned, however, there is a subtle importance on family dinners.

While I was living in Penngrove, one practice I highly valued were nightly dinners with the folks. Even if That 70’s Show was running in the background, there is still some sort of child-like comfort about having your father ask your mother if she wouldn’t mind passing the ranch dressing.

So, when Margalit invited me to Saturday Shabbat lunch with her family, I was grateful.

In attendance aside from Margalit and Jacob were a couple of friends, her daughter and husband with their two kids, and myself.

Margalit had homemade hummos (of course), pita, beet salad, dumplings, a rice dish, chopped cucumber and tomato salad, chicken, all followed by deathly delicious watermelon slices for dessert.

What would I like to drink? I would like water, please. Wha-? Oh, no - no I wouldn’t, I would like local beer is what I would like, of course I would adore your beer I just don’t normally drink beer at noon but what’s that? No, no — I trust you: it’s good beer.

The food was endless (no sooner would I finish my plate when another dish would come out and be thrust upon me) and the conversation with lively. Everyone spoke in English to accommodate me, although every once in awhile the conversation would get derailed; Hebrew would spark deep within someone’s throat in response to some heated topic, and Renat — Margalit’s daughter — would follow it up with English to make sure I was included again.

Weather, travel, politics, child rearing philosophy and especially economics — they were very interested to hear my taken on the American housing market (we spent 10 minutes alone on the fact that we, in the U.S., call it a “foreclosure”)  — and by the end of the 5 hour lunch, I felt right at home.

I thanked Margalit and Jacob for their hospitality, exchanged numbers with Renat for a future escapade sans kids, and staggered home, belly full. Margalit stuck her head out of the door after me, and called “we adopt you! Heh, heh… we see you next week, no?”

How do you say “I wouldn’t miss it for the world” in Hebrew?