After the table was emptied and the dishwasher filled, after we sat down on the balcony and ate eight per person desserts, I called my 13-year-old niece to sit next to me.
They live far away and I see her three or four times a year in total, so I wanted to hear from her how she was doing.
After all, being 13 is not easy.
I asked a question and another question and another question, and since I'm not her mother, it was easy for me to hear you
the answers and react with absolute neutrality, neither for the better, nor for the worse.
The conversation unfolded, and slowly more adults and more children joined in and listened to her tell about her life.
I reprimanded anyone who intervened, tried to correct or explain or just sting, because in our family no one can usually make two consecutive sentences.
She spoke almost without interruption for at least 20 minutes.
She told about the studies, about the teachers, about the children in the class.
After her, on his own initiative, he sat down on the chair next to her 10-year-old brother.
I didn't think too much about what to ask, I had no ulterior motive to extract information from him, confront him with facts, make him understand or change, and he, in turn, was really happy to get the stage in front of everyone and tell about the children he hates, about his hobbies, about the teacher who gave He has a harder job than the one sitting next to him.
His older sister tried to tease him and was scolded, his mother caught him in a little lie, but I made it clear to both of them that he was allowed to tell me what he wanted.
After them also came the little ones, whose world is simpler and we know better, the adults.
And yet, we also heard stories from them that we would not have heard on any other occasion.
When my daughter sat in the "hot seat", I realized how hard it is for me not to be excited by the things she says and not to take them to heart.
And it's not that she doesn't talk to us, but she too is happy to talk and tell without the expected weight of the reaction on her shoulders.
You don't have to be Einat Natan to understand that no one really listens to them on a regular basis, simply because no one listens to anyone.
We are all just waiting for our turn to speak, we all jump in and offer our opinions, our experience and our solutions, even when no one asked for them.
At every other family gathering, the adults would sit down to drink coffee and smoke and talk about boring things like politics or real estate (how boring it is to be an adult!), because it's hard to have deep conversations in such a forum, the older children would retire to the phone, the younger children would bully the parents, but Yesterday we sat for two and a half hours and everyone listened to the children. Sorry for the self-flight, but no one will soon forget this evening.
In American movies the heroes have New Year Resolutions, we're not that pretentious.
I just wish for us in the new year to be able to get closer to the ones we love.
It is never as simple as we would like.
Since we're in the aviation business, I'm flying over the recipe for Dor's honey and salt tart from the great blog "Square Pie", and no, you don't have to wait for Rosh Hashanah to make it.
Look for it and just make sure to follow the instructions, and not overlap the ingredients.
The only problem with it is that right now I can't think of anything else.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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