Corner View - Spring

Happy Passover everyone. Traditionally in Hebrew you say Happy Spring Holiday. It's the holiday that celebrates deliverance from slavery (when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt way back in the day) and the rebirth and renewal that is spring. These are pictures of our seder plates - the ceremonial plates that are the centerpieces of the seder table. One was the real deal, a beautiful plate that my cousins got us for our wedding from the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, and the other was a clever art project my mother-in-law brought from Israel. On it you find the most important symbols of the holiday, many of which symbolize springtime  - the egg, the parsley, the charoset, which is chopped apples and walnuts...so springy! This holiday is the best. There's so much involved. I was leading the seder and trying to tell the story of Passover to the four kids at the table and trying to make it snappy because kids at a table generally want to eat, but there's so much to the story and so many themes and characters. They should really make a movie. Oh wait! They did.

But by far the best part of the evening, and the part that the kids had been anticipating since, well, last Passover, was a visit from the Prophet Elijah (Eliyahu). It's kind of our version of Santa Claus, but without the gifts. Toward the end of the seder we open the door to let in Elijah who drinks from Elijah's cup, a special goblet (read: holy grail) that's in the middle of the seder plate. So for the last four years we've made my brother Aaron dress up in a white sheet, a tallis, a rasta hat, sunglasses and a white beard and dance in while we sing his song. He twirls in, takes a sip of wine and leaves before the kids start to suspect that Uncle Aaron is not at the table. The kids are simultaneously terrified and captivated by Elijah and the adults think it is HYSTERICAL. Later on I went outside to get some mint to make tea and my son was concerned that Elijah was still out there and would get me. Love it. We might have one more year before the jig is up.

For more spring in your step, head over to Spain.

Nest

This ketubah was such a joy to create. The client basically gave me total freedom but also had some really great ideas to offer. Like adding the Hebrew letter "tzadik" to the roof of the bird house. It stands for righteousness and is also the the symbol for the sun sign shared by bride and groom - Aquarius. Love it.

When I have a second I think I'll make it available as a blessing for the home. But in the interim, Nest is settling into the ketubah section of my ETSY shop.

Happy Passover!

Creature Comforts

My animal series is now part of the permanent collection at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. It has taken ages for all of it to come together but all twelve animals are hanging in the waiting area at the Bass Center for Childhood Cancers and Blood Diseases. I can only hope they will bring a little cheer and comfort to the families that have to spend any amount of time in that place.

Play dating

I have an afternoon problem. I pick up my kids from school after lunch, my daughter goes down for her nap, and my son and I are left to kill each other softly, one nerve at a time. We can't leave the house. We don't have much in the way of a yard, not that he wants to go outside. And there's only so many times a day I want to play (insert Zingo, Candyland, What's Gnu?, Guess Who?, War, Memory, Go Fish or Hungry Hippos). I mean if Candyland is not the most insipid game ever created, well then my name is mud. It gets to me. Sometimes we paint which can be nice. Sometimes we do a puzzle or a project. We often bake for part of the time. My thighs can attest. Sometimes he sorts the recycling when I'm really desperate.

And the thing is he has had plenty of play date invitations - to friends' houses, to the pool, to the zoo, to the library. He's in demand. But he won't go anywhere with anyone unless I drive and his sister comes. Two impossibilities since she's napping and I'm watching her.

The other day my daughter was fighting her nap so I decided to call our neighbor and invite her son, who's in kindergarten, to come with us to a park to ride bikes.  I could nearly see her beaming with delight through the phone. So we piled him in the car and threw all the bikes in the back and set out for the park. Keep in mind my son and her son have barely ever played together. I'm not really sure why. They're perfectly nice people. The kids are basically the same age. But that's how it is around here. We're all just too busy coexisting to be in each other's lives. It's the grown-up version of parallel play.

But the minute we got to the park and started to ride the boys were best friends. They only stopped gabbing long enough to sneak up on a squirrel and send it running up a tree in sheer terror. On the way home my son invited him to spend the night. We decided to save that for another day but I could tell the tides had started to turn. Solo playdates might be in our near future.

And as it happens, yesterday, after much persuasion, my son agreed to go to the library with his friend from school and then over to his house. And he LOVED it. He loved the library. He loved scanning my card. He loved driving in her fancy mini-van. He loved his friend's remote control train. He wants to go there again tomorrow by himself and every day forever. And I want to send a personal thank you to the patron saint of play dates for smiling upon my family.

Under Contract

I'm out of hiding for a just a moment to show you what I've been working on the last few days. A while back someone contacted me about purchasing one of my ketubah prints. And while she liked elements of all of them, she wished she could patch together something that incorporated elements of this piece and this piece and this piece and this piece and this piece.  Well this was a project I couldn't resist even though commissions scare the crap out of me. I decided to give it a whirl.

So here's the final sketch she went with, but asked that the tiny village in the corner look less like a tiny tenement. No problem.

The first round is always very flat. Straight color. But then, and this is my big watercolor secret so don't tell anyone, I go over every thing in orange (did you know that orange and aqua make the loveliest shade of green?). And then all the under colors start to glow and turn other colors or deeper shades of themselves. That's my favorite part.

And now I have to go in a add some lime in a few places that are too red. That will bring it down a notch. We don't want it too peppy. It's a marriage contract after all. Serious stuff. Plus the text which will take some maneuvering. Anyone who's worked with Hebrew text in illustrator knows that it can be a little sensitive (type shows up backwards, upside down or both). Takes patience and understanding - ingredients for a good marriage I'd say.

Orange

Right before our trip to Israel this beautiful little hand-bound journal designed by bookmaking goddess Jen of Painted Fish Studio arrived to my home in exchange for, surprise, a painted fish. She also sent along some other little goodies including a slippery mood fish, the likes of which I hadn't seen in probably two decades, and some fruity Japanese tape dispensing thingy which my daughter quickly destroyed. My husband saw the journal and admired the craftsmanship and then had a chuckle. What is your thing with orange? 

I have no idea what he's talking about.

Open Window

Thanks to watching three consecutive episodes of LOST online last night, the jetlag seems to have subsided. Finally. Though a small female demon woke me at 5:45 this morning, which I consider progress. My son, on the other hand, has a future as an international business man or diplomat or flight attendant. He scoffs at jetlag. First night back he slept from 8 pm to 7:30 am. That's a gold medal in sleeping right there.

I've been in a funk since our return. We really had a great trip. Aside from the weather, which was horrible for much of our stay (back to back heat waves and some kind of South African sand storm), every day offered some amazing experience. Sometimes adorable, like when my daughter was putting pick up sticks into my father-in-law's ponytail like he was a geisha. Sometimes wondrous, like watching my son play with the kids of our close friends and actually speak to them in Hebrew. We spent most of our time in the south and the kids really enjoyed being with their aunt and grandparents. One day we spent with friends in Tel Aviv and I fell in love again with that city. It combines Middle East grit with European charm. Picture crumbling 1950s apartment building with well-tended geraniums under every window. And the food. So many kinds of salads and cous cous and shwarma and falafel. And the yogurts too. Holy lactose intolerance. And did I mention the shoco b'sakit? That's chocolate milk in a plastic bag where you bite off the corner and literally nurse yourself into euphoria. It's bliss.

It was also great to see many of our friends and where they're living. Beautiful homes with desert views, funky old apartments in the center of everything, some pastoral, some urban, some up in the hills. Some way out in the middle of nowhere, which you wouldn't think possible in a country this tiny.

And we had a lot of interesting conversations, many of which included questions about our return. We left Israel almost ten years ago. The standard answer has always been two years. There are Israelis living in Silicon Valley forty years and they're still on the two year plan. So who really knows. One thing is for sure. When you marry someone from a different country, it opens a window that can never close. You are forever caught between two worlds. Two cultures. Two languages. Two histories. And in our case, ten time zones. It would be a lot easier if I was European. You can pretty much commute between Israel and Europe. Even New York would be more manageable.  California feels like another whole planet away. But you can't always plan who you love or where your heart takes you. We'll always be missing somewhere or someone.

Here's a taste.