Back in the Holy Land

"WELL DO YOU WANT ME TO HELP YOU OR NOT???" yelled the shuttle bus driver at me as he gruffly loaded my luggage onto his minibus from the airport in Tel Aviv. It was a rough landing home.

Yup, I'm certainly not in Kansas or, rather, San Francisco, anymore. Where the people politely line up to go up the escalator on the right side only in order to let everyone pass on the left and where I saw a kind Far-Eastern woman ask a homeless man if he needed anything to eat, and where I heard no public yelling and where people seemed generally happy, earthquakes and all.

The bus driver was rotten to everyone on the bus, complained about having to take everyone to where they needed to go ("too far in" "taking too long" "can't turn the bus around") and didn't want to take me home, because I live on the outskirts of Jerusalem. But he did flag down a cab where at least the Arab taxi driver was polite and I wished him an Eid Mubarak. He looked surprised that I even knew they had a holiday that day - such is life here.

Hubby treated me like Queen for a Day and then afterwards I reverted back to my role as the Spouse with the Louse.

Married daughter didn't leave me much time to get over jet lag before she asked me to babysit while they went to a wedding, but the grandkid now looks like a big baby buddha. And if he's fed (which is often), he's grateful and smiles and gurgles enough to make the heart melt. But it was my turn to be grateful as she made Friday night dinner and Saturday lunch for all of us instead of running over to her mother-in-law as is her weekend tradition.

I just thought of how funny my trip began when I noticed how Ben Gurion airport put three airlines on the floor just below the main floor. They were Lot Airways (Poland), Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa. Coincidence or not? Putting these airways in the basement - was this not Israel's official airport revenge for World War II atrocities? "Put those airlines in the basement, man, they're not gonna be with the rest of the world's airlines."

And then I thought it amusing (kind of) how I loaned my belly dance belts to a group of young Palestinian women, two of which returned by belts the next day and then one didn't return it. And that was my favorite belt - the velvet one my friend bought me from Turkey. And I was thinking she was probably thinking "you know, this bitch stole my land, and so I'm gonna steal her belly dance belt." OK, wise one. I think that's a fair trade, but I've got the better deal.