time travel

I haven't been looking at my e-mails or answering because by the time I get back home, it's nearly midnight. I feel rather claustrophobic as I can't go out of the house - not even to walk the dog when I get home. But Monday morning, things will be nearly back to normal. It's tiring telling the same stories about dad over and over again to all the different shifts of people coming in throughout the day. My relatives gladly accepted my "interesting" friends and some had wonderful conversations/arguments with them. When the ladies from the Interfaith group came in, we compared rules of mourning for Islam, Christianity and Judaism, which will probably be our topic for our meeting next mnnth.

I saw my teacher from 6th grade at the funeral. A girlfriend who I went to school with from 1st grade was at the "shiva" (mourning) house, plus others from our Bronx neighborhood who immigrated to Jerusalem. It was so strange - all those memories coming back at me. I felt transported back in time, perhaps age 10, sometimes age 15. It seems like so many people have now come back to Israel to live, their parents came from Europe, either before WWII or afterwards, and made a detour to the US - the Bronx, in particular - and then our generation went back to our ancient land.