The big shot of the Babylon-Jerusalem Axis

My grandmother is blasting Barbara Streisand. Apparently love will be the gift you give yourself? Not earplugs?

My grandmother has been sharing her house with me for almost two months now, and it should surprise no one that our 58-year generation-gap is sometimes difficult to bridge. Some days I come home and find that the political analysis playing in the kitchen is competing with news on television, commercial jingles from the bathroom, and nostalgic Israeli tunes wafting out of my grandmother's bedroom. "Are you hungry?" she shouts over the noise, beaming and extending a spoonful of beige.

So I've been surreptitiously turning off radios when she leaves the room, and she's been surreptitiously folding my clothes while I'm away at school. It's not really a solution, but it's a perfectly good band-aid.

[By the way, as I type this, my grandmother tells me that she's going downstairs to visit a neighbor. Excuse me while I shut off the Barbara Streisand CD and throw it out the window.]




For now — Baya's back home, and Barbara Steisand's back at full volume, struggling to be heard over the news.

I'm going to Zichron.