Post 55: One bar mitzvah and a funeral

Post 55: One Bar Mitzvah and a Funeral

Since THE breakup in November, 2008, I've been meeting unconventional men and women in unconventional places. Life would be just too boring if and I'd have nothing to write about, if I met conventional people in conventional places.....or if I didn't meet anyone at all....but then I would probably write about the people I encounter in movies, on TV and in books. For example, I recently finished "Eat, Pray, Love", by Elizabeth Gilbert and seriously felt that I had said goodbye to a friend when the book was finished!

After the flurry of strange men that I recently met, I retreated to a bar mitzvah, where I knew I would be spending a weekend with religious men and women, most of them married, and therefore I would be safe from close encounters of the Israeli kind.

A close friend, recently separated, sent me a text message to 'behave myself". I assured her that I would be ok. I was in a hotel near the beach, sharing a room with my son, and with a full schedule - candle lighting, shabbat dinner, breakfast, Saturday morning prayers and Torah reading, lunch, etc. etc.

My son and I arrived a few hours before the Sabbath (Shabbat) was to begin. I'm not religious, but many of the guests were, which means they had to stay overnight in order to avoid traveling from their homes to the bar mitzvah on Shabbat. It was a beautfiul day, unusually warm for February, even in Israel, and with the beach literally in the backyard of the hotel, I decided to take a walk before the festivities began.

My son was happy to stay reading the paper and watching cable television (which we do not have at home) so I head out in running shoes, a tunic and pants. No makeup. No bathing suit....just me and my extra 5 kilos.

The beach was located on a semi-isolated section of the Mediterranean Sea, with beautiful cliffs on the east, and the sea on the west. I headed north for a peaceful and leisurely walk. I passed the families with children and the thin women in bikinis. I watched the surfers in their wet suits pack up their equipment and head back to their cars. One of them said hello to me and instead of ignoring him, I smiled back and we started to talk. He chatted me up and invited himself back to the hotel, but I told him that I was sharing it with my son, and that it wouldn't be appropriate. He decided to give me his number anyway. He was thirty something and thought I was the same age. I told him that it was the first time anyone had started up with me on the beach in 20 years, and thanked him for massaging my ego. He wanted to massage something more tangible than my ego, telling me that I looked good and was sexy.

And that's when I realized that perhaps not all good looking men in their thirties are attracted to their twiggy counterparts in bathingsuits. Perhaps bored by the thin human scenery, the surfer was turned on by rounder female mammals (and I don't mean dolphins).

This writer took the surfer's phone number and returned to the hotel. She didn't spend the night with the surfer, but enjoyed the weekend. And then on Saturday night her friends' mother died. She spent Friday on a beach, Saturday in a synagogue and Sunday in a cemetary. One bar mitzvah and a funeral.