It’s been a while since I’ve seen my good friend Ricky in Metula. and she’s never told me much about what has happened to her home in the war and how her Parkinson’s has advanced.  At her birthday party in May she could only kvell that so many people came to visit.  

But now she gave me details.  Some of them were obvious – she can barely move.  The long year of displacement and the lack of intense care she needs has worsened her physical situation dramatically, and there is no possibility of regaining that loss.  

Her house, on the other hand, was fixed up after the rocket hit.  The rats that took over the place were eventually conquered and the chewed-up books replaced.  The tables they used to sharpen their teeth were resanded, I believe.  Even the toilets they seem to have loved have been replaced.  The home looks like it did over 50 years ago when I first visited them.  She was more fortunate than many of her neighbors, she said, because her late husband – who built the house – insisted on more and more concrete.  The garden – where I married her daughter years back – needs to be completely recreated from scratch.  I stared at it in disbelief, remembering the call of the Muezzin from Lebanon interrupting my carefully arranged ceremony.  

The wonderful mayor of Metula visits her – she was his teacher long ago.  May the miracle of his rebuilding of the town extend to her recovery, however small.