The tree that seemed dead weeks ago, suddenly began to blossom, today on Tu B’ Shvat. And I wanted to go out to the newly re-opened grocery.  But just for a second I couldn’t remember what I had to take with me.  A gas mask, a surgical mask – all the wars, all the history of survival for the past 50 years came back to me in one second.  The Tu b’Shvat during the ‘73 war, where I was the only driver in the neighborhood and spent all my time chauffeuring the other women and children, bringing class notes to my soldier-students on reserve duty.  But on Tu B’Shvat my neighbors and I took the children to the field to plant trees.  And the Gulf War when we spent our time getting everything ready for six p.m. when the rockets would start falling – and we carried our gas masks with us everywhere we went during the day.  All this came back to me for a moment as I stopped at the door, wondering what I had forgotten. 

And that’s what I’d forgotten.  That everything blossoms again.  Like they say in Yiddish, “Az men lebt, derlebt men.”  If you live, you live through.

(p.s. In case you don’t know about the Gulf War in Israel, check this out.

and in case you want to see how it felt, here’s my book on it: Love And War