Abundance

It comes in many forms. I stopped into a local health food shop to buy some organic peppers, of which there was none left, and struck up a conversation with the proprietress of the store about money.

"In my money book, it tells you not to say 'I want' but that you already have. Say, 'the money's coming' - or,'Im going to have...'." She advised me.

Oh? I get it. If you keep on saying "want, want, want", then you'll always be wanting. These are the laws of the universe.

I told this to Hubby who managed to wrangle the car off our stingy daughter for some local errands.

He's sitting at the wheel repeatedly telling himself, "I'm going to have an abundance of sex" and laughed at his new-found knowledge.

Meanwhile, I thought of joining a support group of parents whose kids have turned religious. There must be a support group in Tel Aviv or somewhere secular. Because this abundance of my children becoming religious is rapid and somewhat surprising.

This week my 4th daughter announced that she was going to keep the Sabbath totally - no computer, no phone calls, no turning on lights, smoking, and she's going to synagogue.

My soldier daughter and her boyfriend have come to me for the weekend, and demanded that I have everything ready, all the food, hot water, hot plate - everything done before 4:12 pm - the onset of the Sabbath. They are getting more and more observant and I wonder when they'll stop sleeping with each other if all the rest of the stuff is so important. But they'll probably leave that for last, of course.

She kept on annoying me throughout the afternoon while I was speed-cooking, announcing that I have "1 hour left before Shabbat starts" and why is it taking me so long to make the food - didn't I start at 11:00 am? No. Actually, I started at 12:15 p.m. after a lovely breakfast out with my husband and married daughter. I had enough money left over after shopping to treat everyone and it felt good. I hadn't dined out since late November. But getting back to the soldier daughter, every 1/2 hour or so she would trounce into the kitchen and annoy me with her time announcements.

"Shabbat is at 4:00, and you're not even ready!" she complained.

I glanced at the newspaper and saw that it actually began at 4:12 pm and told her so, plus I'm adding the 18 minutes extra allowed by rabbis, or whomever it was that did this timing thing. So I actually had until 4:30.

And miraculously everything was done by 4:30-ish, and I wondered what it would have been like had I told the kids to fend for themselves while I wandered off to my favorite Jewish Renewal service in Jerusalem which was this Friday night. It was hard for me to miss that service.

But I chose family this weekend and after dinner Hubby was making fun of my son who was in one of the bedrooms playing Playstation Soccer with my (secular) daughter's fiancee - so he thankfully didn't know he was being made fun of - by Hubby putting a large bowl over his mouth, saying my son's mouth was as large as that bowl. This put all my daughters in hysterics and two of then literally fell on the floor with laughter. They love taunting and teasing each other and have been doing this shit since they could talk. You all know we're not the perfect family. There was no point yelling at my husband about teasing my son behind his back. And don't worry about my son, who gets this all the time from his sisters, and gives it right back to them about them about pimples, lice (a thing of the past,thank God, but definitely part of their history), trouble with the law, trashy behavior, etc.

So the abundance of money for a breakfast out, four out of five kids home for the weekend and laughter was good enough for me.