Exactly What You Did Not Want
Living With One Heart
This is the last post a food writer would want to type:
“Hi. I am stuck in the hotel and every meal we have the same thing. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every item, each pepper is recycled.”
And this, from the dreamy food land of Israel.
But, listen: we landed like sliding into home, just as Israel closed her airspace. We must have been the last plane in before Ben Gurion Airport closed.
If you know anything about our trip or the vast friend network of those vying to see and host us, you’d know what a tragedy this unplanned, long stay in our hotel is.
Thing is, this is the big war with Iran. Each day, I can have many alerts that shriek at me and herd me quickly to the shelter. Each day, I know that the Israel just outside of our hotel walls is a drive that can happen with sirens, with the need to get underground. We are invited with friends picking us up, but we stay and host those friends at our same-foods-same-flavors breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.
We are booked here until June 22nd. It feels like it has already been weeks.
That is a crazy amount of hotel breakfast lasagna they serve for breakfast. Five days is a long time for the same plastic bottle of sweet tzatziki dressing when they are hundreds of families who would GLADLY include me in their family meals just twenty-minutes away.
And two days ago, the hotel was quiet.
Then a ballistic missile hit a residential tower in Petach Tikvah.
Two hundred fifty plus people and their dogs came here to the hotel, bandaged, injured, and sorting out their lives now, after they lost everything.
The garage is a crowded place. Getting to the underground takes much longer.
And the dining room containes much noise. And joy. And rambunctuouis kids. Today, one boy’s blue rubber sandal flicked off his foot and hit my friend, Anna’s mouth. It’s like this. Tense mothers, sometimes wild kids, and lots of chocolate milk.
They still serve the same foods, recycled and appearing in the same salads and grilled veg, no matter what is going on. d
Who I am has changed, though. I am looking for the good things to eat, but more like the beautiful people to serve.