tamarjacobson

[Click on the photographs to enlarge …]

One thing I did a lot of this past week is eat! Me oh my, how I love the breakfasts in Israel. I seem to eat as if I am quelling not only the physical need for sustenance, but my emotional hunger as well. Filling those cracks and crevices of loneliness from living in the United States without my family all these past 22 years. 

Quenching the yearning of all my senses: for sunshine, abundance of spring flowers around Pesach time, the sweet, pungent scents of blooming orange blossoms, and aquamarine colors of the mediterranean sea. 

I soaked in the moments we all came together, loving each and every family member, excited to see and feel us all in the same room. It was a great healing for me to be with everyone, to feel belonging, and an individual in my own right, at one and same time. Close enough to feel loved and included, and detached enough to observe each and every one of us as who we are, and how we have all become to be the people we are today.

We gathered in celebration of our mother's 93rd birthday …

… all five siblings together in one room after, who knows, perhaps more than 30 years? I realized what a courageous and loving family we all are. Each person with their own unique ways of expressing emotions, choosing their life's work and passions, and all fiercely loving, devoted, and caring about their own children and families. I felt pride in our mother, standing tall behind us as life partner tried to take our family picture, just an hour or so before our return to Philadelphia.

Here are a few of the outtakes as L.P. tried to gather all of us together:

And, finally, here are we – the five sibs. What can I say? I could not stop smiling. 

I write this with tears of longing in my study back home in Philadelphia, and yet I know that each and every one of my sisters and brothers reside deeply in my heart and emotional memory. They are all a part of me, and I a part of them.