mean, that nothing else made sense under the circumstances, we got organized quickly. Ilan had already prepared bags for me and for him, it was all arranged, written instructions, phone numbers, phone tokens, etc., Ilan being Ilan. We phoned Ariela to come and stay with Adam and take him to day care later. He slept all night and never knew a thing.
Ofer was born at seven twenty-five a.m. It was a very easy, quick delivery. I got there and gave birth. They hardly had time to prepare me. Gave me an enema and sent me to the bathroom. I felt strong pressure in my stomach, and as soon as I sat down on the toilet, I could feel him coming out! I yelled for Ilan, and he came in and just picked me up the way I was, and put me down on a bed in the corridor, and shouted for a nurse. Together they pushed me, running, to the large delivery room, which by the way was where I had Adam (in the same room!), and three more pushes, he was out!
Her face glows, and she smiles generously at Avram. He responds with a questioning smile.
Ofer weighed three kilos six hundred. Pretty large, based on my limited sample. Adam was barely two kilos (minus three grams!). They’ve come along nicely since then, the two of them.
That’s it. That is exactly what she wanted to write down. She takes a deep breath. Just for that it was worth lugging the notebook all this way. Now she’s ready to eat. A sudden hunger gnaws at her. But she sucks on the pen for a moment longer, wondering if there’s anything else to add about the birth. She shakes out her strained wrist. A high school kind of pain, she thinks: How often do I find myself writing by hand?
The midwife was called Fadwa, I think, or Nadwa? From Kfar Raami anyway. I met her another few times during the two days I spent there, and we chatted a little. I was interested to know who this girl was, whose hands were the first to touch Ofer when he came into the world. A single woman. Strong, a feminist, really sharp, and very funny, she always made me laugh.
Ofer’s feet were slightly blue. When he was born he hardly cried, just made one short sound and that was it. He had huge eyes. Exactly Avram’s eyes.
She turns on a flashlight and reads what she’s written. Maybe she should be more detailed? She reads it again and finds she likes the style. She knows what Ilan would say about it, and how he would erase her exclamation marks, but Ilan will probably never read it.
But maybe there is room for a little more detail? Facts, not embellishments. What else happened there? For some reason she goes back to Adam’s birth again, a long and difficult delivery, and to how she kept trying to make the midwife and the nurses like her, wanting them so badly to admire her endurance and to praise her when they talked in the nurses’ room and compare her to the other mothers, who screamed and wailed and sometimes cursed. How much effort she put into ingratiating herself at the most important moments in her life, Ora thinks sadly. Her legs are starting to lose their feeling. She tries sitting on a different rock, then another, and eventually goes back to the ground. These are no conditions for writing an autobiography, she thinks.
And after a few minutes they laid Ofer on me. It bothered me that he was wrapped in a hospital blanket. I wanted to be naked with him. Everyone else in that room except the two of us was completely unnecessary for me. And Avram wasn’t there.
She gives him a cautious glance. Maybe she should erase the last few words. Maybe she’ll want Ofer to read this one day? Maybe she and Ilan will—
In her gut she begins to feel disquiet. Who is she writing this for? And why? There are almost two pages now. How has she produced two pages? Avram lies on his back on the other side of the fire, which by now is only a heap of glowing embers. He faces the sky. His beard looks disheveled. Someone should tidy up his beard. She studies his face: at twenty he started going bald, from the forehead back, the first in his age group, but by that time he’d grown an impressive head of