Joseph ZItt's [as if in dreams] 2024-08-22
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
It's busier than usual in the lobby of the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. Children are zooming around, alone and in groups. They're having a summer camp day for the staff and residents' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. There may even be great-great-grandchildren. Several residents, after all, are over one hundred years old.
I've been sitting in the lobby for hours. I had been notified that my refrigerator would be arriving this morning. With the last delivery that I had gotten, the company had sent me a text before they arrived. That hasn't happened now.
I have told the receptionist that the refrigerator would be arriving. I'm waiting in one of the many comfortable chairs in the lobby.
I can recognize many of the people there by now. We say hello or wave at each other as they pass.
Two women keep reappearing. They appear to be getting a good walk in without going out into the heat. On one of their circuits, a worker suggests that they might be safer if they weren't walking arm in arm. Linked like that, if one were to fall, so would the other.
A couple sits near me, each with their caregivers. The man is dapper, always wearing a suit jacket. The woman is less present, sitting in her wheelchair, her head tilted to one side. Her caregiver is a friend. I often see her in the dining hall at Kiddush on Friday nights. The caregiver strokes the woman's face as if she were a baby, and always brings her a sip of the grape juice that is used in place of wine.
I hadn't realized that the man and woman were a couple until I saw them together at Kiddush a few weeks ago, after the dining hall tables had been reorganized.
Now, they sit together in the lobby, as close as their walker and wheelchair will allow. The man's arm is around the woman.
Their caregivers talk together in Hebrew. I think both are Filipino, though the man may be from Nepal. Each had only spoken English to me, and I'm surprised at how good their Hebrew actually is.
While I'm waiting, I get a notification that another delivery is about to arrive: two packages of plastic storage cubes. The driver walks in from the truck soon after, carrying both packages on one shoulder.
I walk with him to the elevator. "I can bring them that far," he says, "but I am forbidden to enter the elevator." OK. He puts them on the ground in front of the elevator doors.
When the doors open, I attempt to pick the packages up. I can't. They're too heavy. I have no idea how he carried them on his shoulder.
I kick the boxes into the elevator before the doors close. When I reach my floor, I kick them back out. I nudge one out of the way, then continue to kick the other until I reach my apartment. I go back and get the other, kicking it along the floor, too. I open the door and push them into a nook in front of a closet. I'll come back and assemble them later.
I head back to the lobby and sit down again. Fewer people are there. Most are probably in the dining hall for lunch.
"When are you moving in?" the receptionist asks.
"September first. Most of my things are getting here the Friday before, but I officially move in on the first."
"So Friday, tomorrow?"
"A week from tomorrow. Eight days from now."
We are speaking English. I could probably handle this conversation in Hebrew, but she always speaks English to me. She was one of the first people I met here, back before I moved to Israel, before I could speak much modern Hebrew at all.
"We are waiting for you to live here. You are a very good man. And your family are very good people, all of them."
Some of the family come down to the lobby to see what's happening and if I'm still there. I am. The refrigerator was supposed to have arrived an hour earlier, at the latest.
We check the SMS that told us that it would be coming today. It includes the driver's mobile number, but there's no way to dial it from the SMS app or to copy and paste it into anything else. We end up writing it down on a piece of paper, then typing it back in to dial it. The driver doesn't answer.
The SMS also has a WhatsApp link. That leads us to a bot. After a few exchanges, we're told that the driver had called me at 8:15 AM. Unfortunately, at that point, I was still in my current apartment, where phone service, as well as Internet connectivity, is iffy (one big reason why I'm moving out). He was already at the House by then. When I didn't answer his call, he left, and didn't bother to send any kind of notification that he had. So I've been sitting waiting for him for five hours.
The bot tells us that they'll try the delivery again in a few days. I hope they let me know. I'll be going back and forth for deliveries for the next week or so.
I head back home. I have lots of things to do.
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You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me at that Las Vegas address, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
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L'hitraot.