A Wedding Story Part 1. Pre Wedding

Part 1. PRE WEDDING

I won’t bore you with all the preparations, especially since Sivan and Buchach (Avraham, to his family and the Interior Ministry) did the majority of them. Ran, Buchach’s father, and I were given information on a need-to-know basis and most of that need-to-know information was based on how much money we were being asked to fork out. Never have I spent my children’s inheritance as happily as when I heard how much a serving of assado was going to cost me. But I’m getting ahead of myself, as I often do.

So the official wedding season started on the 23^rd May when our oldest son, Gal, arrived from Australia. However, like all sporting seasons, there’s the pre-season, which is usually more arduous than the season itself. And so it was with us. The pre-wedding season was far more challenging, nerve-wrecking and full of unknowns than the actual wedding period we had as a family here in Israel.

As we all know, this past year the world has been preoccupied with a certain pandemic. As most of us know, there is now a vaccine that will prevent us from getting the virus, or if we get it we won’t suffer too badly from it. In fact, there are quite a few vaccines. Old news. So here’s the rub. It appears that the Morse code transmitter hasn’t gotten the message to Australia quite yet. The Australian government still seems to be stuck in a time warp, believing that the best way to protect its good citizens from the virus is by going back 200 years and returning Australia to its past as a penal colony. It worked admirably well in 2020, so why change? Strict Soviet discipline and a moribund, compliant population ensures that not only does any person lucky enough to be given permission to enter the hallowed land need to spend 14 days in a hotel quarantine that makes an Ebola hospital look like a farmer’s market, if you live in Australia, you are forbidden to leave. Forbidden. Chinese human rights violations? Ukrainian dictatorship? Try being an Australian citizen who innocently wants to attend his sister’s wedding overseas. Verbotten. A holiday in a Corona free destination? You have no right to request it. Or at least no hope of getting permission.

Gal applied and was refused 5 times for permission to leave Australia. Knowing that the wedding of a sibling in an almost corona free and fully immunized country is not going to get him on to a plane, we were forced to come up with elaborate reasons to try to crack the code of receiving the desperately sort after travel exemption. In the end, and with much blood, sweat and tears, the bureaucrat in Pyongyang relented. I would rather not say how we got permission, for fear that the same Pyongyangian bureaucrat may accidentally read this.

BTW, I think I may have erred. It appears that Australia has received a message that there are vaccines. Some of the vaccines are more effective than others but they all do a better job than no vaccine. Australia has bought as much vaccine as it can get its hands on, of the type that no-one else wants, and then has done its best in not giving it to the general population. It just seems to be easier to keep everyone locked up until the end of 2022, with the population living in perpetual fear of hermetic closures every few months, rather than instigate an orderly vaccination program. Seriously.

In any case, Gal arrived safe and sound and since he had received only one dose of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, went into 10 days of home quarantine. Now none of us are perfect, 100% rule abiding individuals. We all bend the rules to suit our version of reality. The regulations stipulate a 10 day home quarantine in a separate, closed off section of a house. Our logic ran that Gal was coming from a covid free country to an ostensibly covid free country. He is partially vaccinated in a home where everyone is fully vaccinated, in a community where the vast majority are fully vaccinated. So quarantine had a loose definition of within the boundaries of the gates of our community. No restaurants, no local towns, no travelling to see friends who don’t live here on Tuval, even though friends did come to see him, including his brother and sister (the bride-to-be). Well, I don’t remember exactly who, but someone famous once said “rules are made to be broken”. He’ll have his chance for strict, unwavering hotel quarantine when he returns to Australia.

Amongst Gal’s luggage lay a very important package. I was in Australia in January and as I prepared to come home realised I was overweight. No snide remarks, please. I had bought too many gifts or had too many gifts thrust upon me for others in Israel. Either way, my brand new K-Mart pie maker just wasn’t going to fit into my already overstuffed suitcase. In celebration of its arrival, we had real Aussie meat-pies for Gal’s first night in the holy country. I think he would have preferred Israel’s king of fast food, a shawarma, rather than Australia’s, a meat pie, but bad luck. He would get his share of shawarmas, and more, in the next three and a half weeks.

I need to chronicle here something that I didn’t actually see or experience myself, nor do I have any actual first hand knowledge of. There may be those that claim that this is actually nothing unusual for me, but in the case of Sivan’s hens’ party, I can only report that enough alcohol to fuel a trophy winning rugby team celebration left our house on Friday night. Yael and Kim were chauffeured by the (for once) teetotaling Susan to a house where 12 usually upstanding, well behaved young ladies waited to be instructed in the alchemistic art of cocktail making. What goes on in Hararit stays in Hararit, but judging by the meagre amount of alcohol that returned, the stomach pumps at the local hospital were on high alert and the aforementioned rugby team was left jealously high and dry. In any case, by the time the wedding came around, 10 days later, they’d all sobered up enough to get drunk again.

Whilst the wedding was the primary reason that Gal went through the seven gates of hell to get permission to exit the Australian penal colony, that doesn’t mean that he had to suffer in the leadup, quarantine or not. Gal’s meat eating prowess is the stuff of Tuval legends (a chip off the old block) and he insisted that we “get the band back together”, namely the Tuval Meat-On-The-Hill band. Over the years, tens of farmyard animals, of different varieties, have been sacrificed for the sake of satisfying the gluttony of a bunch of carnivores. So on the Saturday of quarantine we gathered in our back yard with much meat, wine and most importantly, old friends. The bubble of community still very much exists here, after almost 40 years.

Over these past 12 months, Israel had rather, in a rare showing of efficiency, organization and logic, set up pop-up covid testing stations, where on any given day of the week, in towns and villages throughout the country, the health department would set up a mobile location where you could go and get tested.  Since Israel has successfully implemented its vaccination program and Covid cases have plunged into single digits, these mobile testing stations are no longer popping up. This is perfectly understandable, unless you are a tourist in home quarantine, wanting to get a test to get yourself out free within a ten-day period, rather than the full fourteen days. On day eight of Gal’s quarantine we found the last ever pop-up station in the nearby town of Maalot, so off we trundled. However, in a bout of 61 year old forgetfulness, that has been going on for 61 years, or because I had so much on my tiny mind, with the wedding coming up, or simply I’m just a fucking moron, I received a phone call from my beloved cousin Carole, with her asking “where are you”? I had totally forgotten that I had arranged for Carole and her husband Mike to come and visit Gal. So there they were, sitting by themselves in my lounge room, whilst I’m in Maalot. trying to help confused medics stick an earbud up Gal’s nose and work out how to send him the results if he wasn’t a member of one of the health funds.

Humility generally isn’t a quality that people associate with me. Grovelling is not in my usual vocabulary. But did I ever apologize!! I returned home as quickly as possible, entering on all fours, crawling along the ground, humbled, embarrassed, chastened and any other synonym the thesaurus has on its list. To make matters worse, Carole was so good natured and understanding. Perfect payback. In the end we had a lovely afternoon, despite my worst efforts.

By the way, what did I say about Israel’s efficient testing system? Gal still hasn’t received his presumably negative result. Not to worry, by the next day’s afternoon we took a unilateral decision that Gal did not pose a threat to public safety and we descended to his favourite humus joint, where for the first time in three years he was able to sit at a formica table in a grungy hole and wipe his big bowl of chickpea paste clean. Spotlessly clean. Pita bread is a very good absorbent towel when it needs to be. I almost expected him to ask for sort after shewarma directly after the humus, but even he has a lomit and he got his shewarma the next day.

After Gal, next in line to be spoilt was Yoav, the half of The Twins that lives overseas, and coming onto the planet 20 minutes after his brother, is our youngest child. We did a pretty good job spoiling him, as he deserves. That Shabbat dinner, just the eight of us, (two partners have now joined the organic six Nirenses) was almost as special an event as the upcoming wedding. It is so rare that we are all together and it is very possible that it may never be again, because next time we are all together there might be a toddler biting our ankles. Who knows? It is so cute to see The Twins together. They regress 18 or so years, wrestling, chasing each other around, silly dancing and telepathically joining their brains. They bring much joy to our family.

The last pieces of the family puzzle and of the international contingent was arriving in a couple of days’ time; Susan’s sister Karen and her daughter Ma’ayan.

I think it is safe to say that Israel leads the world in mass vaccination and subsequent re-opening of society. To the point that we forget that there is a world out there that is still very seriously dealing with Covid19. I mention this here because with all the celebrations, both before and during the wedding, there is much sadness in the acknowledgement that many family members couldn’t make the trip. I’ve already described the difficulties Gal had getting permission to leave Australia. Weddings and even funerals are not worthy justifications to get permission to leave. My mother and sisters had zero chance of obtaining a travel exemption. Sivan is my mother’s only granddaughter. It was truly heartbreaking for my mother, myself and my daughter and putting all cynicism aside for a moment, I would love someone to explain to me the logic and threat my mother’s coming to Israel in June 2021 poses to the good people of Australia. “Ok”, I thought, “at least Susan’s family can come”. Now it’s Israel’s turn to put up barriers. First ones to get stricken off the list were Susan’s cousins, whose daughters are too young to be vaccinated. No vaccination, no entry. Then it’s all non Israelis, vaccinated or not who are not allowed in. Once again, why our son Yoav, who is an Israeli and is vaccinated, is allowed into Israel, but Samantha, his girlfriend, who is not Israeli but is vaccinated, is not allowed entry, is beyond my level of understanding. Susan’s cousins? Same. Susan’s sister? Same. In the end, the Israeli Interior Ministry allowed for an exception and granted Susan’s sister an exemption to enter Israel. At least that. The ongoing Corona pandemic had conspired to whittle the numbers of overseas guests for the wedding from 18 who had planned to come to a mere 4. And I am aware that we were lucky. There are others that are struggling to get parents or siblings here for their own celebrations, so I really don’t have any right to complain.

I have at times been accused of being a Luddite, but for the next wedding, I want to be an owner of a self driving car. Before the wedding we had 3 trips to the airport. That dash to Maalot for a covid test and 2 trips to a private hospital near Haifa for covid and serological tests. Trips to the wedding venue, malls for new clothing and assorted other journeys. After the wedding, more auto-pilot trips to the airport, various hospitals for pre-flight corona tests and assorted other journeys. Failing an electric self driving vehicle, I’ll just buy a Saudi oil well. It’ll be cheaper.

A few days before Sivan and Buchach were to marry, we had one final pre wedding trip to the venue in order to close off some last minute details and arrange the last instalment of my impoverishment. Buchach’s dad, Ran, casually asked me if I was wearing closed shoes or sandals to the wedding. The imploring look in his eyes made it perfectly obvious that he was hoping, in the bottom of his heart, that I was going to say sandals so he could justify wearing them as well. Now that’s my type of in-laws. With equally sad eyes, I complained for the umpteenth time how much I’d spent on a very nice, over-priced pair of shoes that I will only wear, at best, 4 times in my life. He gave a resigned sigh, knowing that he was going to have to wear the shoes that he had only ever worn on 3 previous occasions. I was definitely worse off than him. I was forced to buy new clothing as well, rather than make do with an old but nice pair of pants and a shirt that had only been worn about 5 times. Ran and Esti, our in-laws, are orthodox Jews and in their world a black pair of slacks and a white shirt is de rigueur for weddings. Never have I been so close to changing my lifestyle. I guess in the end, I scrubbed up ok.

I mentioned earlier that I returned from Australia over-weight. Now I’m not talking about luggage and snide comments are welcome. Upon returning to Israel I went on a reasonably strict diet and lost a reasonably small amount of weight. Once we had the family here, all talk of diet, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure and medical advice, became theoretical. Besides the meat-a-thon I had organized for Gal, our neighbours threw a pre wedding feast where many people from Tuval were invited, every restaurant in the north vied for our business, and I happily cooked a variety of meals to fit the variety of dietary stipulations within our family. We attained culinary nirvana, however, two nights before the wedding. When there isn’t a wedding or a Corona lockdown that prevents me from working, I organize home hospitality cooking programs in the homes of my Arab neighbours throughout the Galilee. So my friend and worker Roudena prepared us a meal that the royal chef of the King of Saudi Arabia would have been jealous of.  Vine leaves and stuffed vegetables, shish barak (meat ravioli cooked in yogurt), kofta tehina and cauliflower with tehina, wild endive, okra and mnazaleh (chickpeas and aubergine stew), tabouli and fatoush salad, rice chicken and lamb pilaf, fatayer (pastries stuffed with wild spinach) and much more.  It truly was the type of feast that you see in the movies, with the camera panning down a long table, piled high with irresistible goodies. Roudena smiles with her eyes and Fayez, her husband, is simply the nicest man ever put on this planet. It was the absolutely perfect pre-wedding meal, except for each one of us arriving home with acute bloatedness.  We needed a 24-hour detox before starting the feastevities of the wedding.

If truth be told, we earnt our sumptuous meal. Sivan, our magnificent daughter, decided that we couldn’t lounge around too much before the wedding. Relaxing was an unjustified evil. So a crew of 14 sat on the floor, at tables, on stools, in our lounge-room-turned-work-room, where we were instructed how to cut, tie and glue tiny pot plants. She is studying to be a kindergarten teacher, and boy, do I feel sorry for the kids that she is going to be in charge of when its arts and craft time. The ayatollah Sivan. To our relief, she spent the next day, the day before the wedding, fretting at home with Buchach, her hubby-to-be.  We relaxed.

The day before the wedding was a day for lounging, zen tantric breathing exercises, gummy sweets that are legally bought in Boston but illegal in Israel (sshh. Don’t tell anyone) and going over check-lists for the last time. Whilst I am not superstitious, I wanted to be cautious the day before the auspicious event. Hence I placed a ban on myself from getting in a car, climbing a ladder, touching sharp objects or any other activity that might in some way lead to an accident. My family thought I was being uncharacteristically timid but I wasn’t going to do anything that might put The Big Day at risk. I tried to be unconvinced when it was pointed out to me that statistically most accidents happen in the home, and come lunchtime, with an empty fridge and a still half full stomach left over from the previous night’s banquet, we drove (yes, I know…) to a much loved restaurant in a nearby town where we ate the famously grumpy owner’s delicious local food. It was much more for the sake of one final pre wedding family meal than the need to refill our stretched stomachs.

When I imagined the morning of the first of our children’s wedding, I envisioned panic, last minute errands, wardrobe failures, tension and general mayhem. And to my surprise, the atmosphere at home was as serene as an Icelandic health resort. I was worried that I wasn’t worried. And it really didn’t change. We slowly showered, shaved, applied make up, and dressed in a manner that belied the butterflies flitting around in my stomach. The excitement started to go up a notch or four when we piled into the taxi to take us to the wedding venue.