Four Month Thoughts...What do these signs mean?

This post is actually from the last night of Chanukah, which was about over a month ago. Even though I am just getting around to posting it, it still means a lot to me. Enjoy:)

 I was at a coffee shop on Ringleblum, which is my favorite shop near my apartment. As I sat at a table working on my resumé, very engrossed and listening to some music, all of sudden I feel a presence next to me and I expected to look up finding a familiar face. Instead a little baby, no more than a year old came right up to my leg, pacifier in mouth, moppy, curly “jew-fro” hair, and I expected him to start crying thinking I was his mother, realized I wasn’t and run away. Instead, it was as if he knew me and just stayed there, smiling through his pacifier, wrinkles around his mouth that reach the corners of his eyes, finding a long lost friend that, unbeknownst to him, we’d never met in his life. I was so surprised, but tickled to death because as most of you know, I LOVE BABIES! So I stopped what I was working on and looked down upon this beautiful little baby boy and said, "Shalom Yeled!"(Hello, boy), and he smiled even wider, recognizing the language (or just the fact that I had a friendly smile on my face). His very tall father was standing nearby and as soon as I said hello to the boy he ran shyly to his father’s legs, and then the father just looked down at me and we both laughed. His mother, who’d been studying at a table nearby, came and stood behind me and we were all laughing because the boy came back over to me first, rather than his mother, again as if he were seeing an old friend, or as if to say to his parents, “look mom and dad, I found a new friend! I don’t know her name but here she is!” 

Soon after they left, the song “Seasons of Love” from the soundtrack of Rent, the musical, came on my iTunes. There is a line in the song “You know that life is a gift from up above….Measure your life in love.” Whether it’s because I am feeling more spiritual living here in Israel, or it’s always been in my soul and it’s just been waiting to find an outlet to be set free and come out in front of my face, I feel like it’s those types of moments in life where I have to think about two things: 1) How precious the joy of life is, especially for that particular boy who has so much innocence, so much ahead of him to look forward to, and has no qualms, clearly, about going up to strangers (that could also just be an Israeli thing, because despite what your opinions are, most people here are some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met). 2) It’s moments like those, with the little boy coming up to me with a mile-long smile, and then the song coming on right after he left, that make me wonder, do things happen for a reason, or is there a cosmic force (whether you want to call that God, a spirit, the Star Wars Force, what have you), that ever so peacefully moves about, around, and through us all. How perfect was the timing of it all? When, even though I wasn’t feeling 100% health-wise, and I was sitting at the table frustrated with Microsoft Word, just when I was thinking I should go home because I was getting tired, here comes this little boy, putting a smile to my face and almost bringing tears to my eyes at how beautiful, precious and adorable he was. That little boy, whom I will probably never see again, changed my mood for the rest of that night and immediately I had to write this post. 

Soon after, our group’s Madricha, Michal, arrived in the shop with her mom and two of her three sisters, whom I have always wanted to meet. So, if I had left when I thought I was going to leave, I would have missed out on this “meet-cute” with my little friend, and then seeing my friend Michal. Call it the last night of Chanukah’s little miracle, or what you will, but I’m calling it a beautiful moment in life that so fittingly ended one of my favorite holidays in what’s growing to be one of my favorite places on this Earth.

Life moves way too fast for us sometimes, and often even when I want to stop and smell the hummus, I find an entire week has flashed before my eyes and I didn’t remember to be as present as I am during other weeks. So, it is moments like in the coffee shop, on one of my favorite streets here in Be’er Sheva, living like a local, that allow me to realize how precious every single moment, every person, and every challenge I come across in life, especially during my time here, is important and wonderful; a reminder just how blessed I am to be alive and have the support of friends and family while I live here in Israel.

I will end this post with a quote my dear mom shared with me:

“There are two ways to live; you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein.