A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

“It’s a deer. That’s the sign for the Jerusalem Zoo.”

“Is it close? Let’s go there,” he asked.

We have a membership at the Safari in Ramat Gan, so I thought that if we were already in Jerusalem we could go around in nature or see the ancient ruins, but Yotam wanted the zoo so everything else was going to wait until the next trip.

We walked around the prim garden paths, passing by vast lawns. A family with little children passed by us, one child in a stroller and another one in a baby carrier, on their way to the large animal cages. To our right was a row of flamingos standing on one leg and sipping from the pink lake.

“Look, Mommy, they’re pink!”

“That’s right. Do you know how that happens? They put beet juice in their water so that they’ll stay pink, because here they don’t have the salmon they usually eat in the wild, and which maintains their color.”

“So if I eat salmon or beets, will I turn pink too?”

“No, we’re not flamingos.”

“Oh,” he breathed a sigh of relief.

So did I. Salmon and beets have escaped a boycott, I thought to myself. As it is, he hasn’t touched meat for months − ever since he realized that it comes from animals just like Snoopy.

“But that’s a shame, Mommy. I’d have told Gili and then she would stop coloring her hair with pink markers.”

We continued walking up the mountain towards the large animal cages and the beautiful Noah’s Ark at the edge of the gardens.

Yotam’s hand felt around for mine. The space I’d given him provided enough room for him to return to me. Each time, I’m surprised anew to find out that it really does work, and I’m amazed by how hard it is for me to remember to restrain myself.

“What does it say here, Mommy?”

“The Red Panda feeding is at 5 p.m.”

“Can we watch, Mommy?” My little boy had reappeared.

“Sure, that’ll be in a couple of minutes. We’ll wait.”

The caretakers arrived, equipped with a sack full of bamboo shoots, the beautiful animal’s food. Yotam didn’t move an inch, quietly staring at the feasting pandas.

“Can we get going, Yotam?”

“Just a minute,” he leaned down to tie his shoelaces. “Okay. Let’s go,” he said and ran ahead.

He stopped at the lemur area. “There’s no fence here. Can I go in?” Yotam was thrilled to be so close to them without any kind of separation. “They’re like monkeys dressed up as zebras,” he said.

“That’s right, Yotam. It’ll soon be Purim, so we’ll have to think of a costume for you.”

“I’m dressing up with Gili. I’ll be Timon and she’ll be Pumbaa,” he announced.

I realized that everything was already set. “All right, Yotam. I’ll talk to her mother.”

As long as I wasn’t being asked to dress up along with Gili’s mother as Simba and Mufasa, I was fine with it all. Get used to it, I told myself, your boy’s growing up. And rejoice. He has his own will and his own taste.

Little monkeys with long striped tails were leaping all around us. They, too, just like the rest of us, simply want some space in order to be happy.

Eleventh Meeting

Snoopy came to sit on the couch next to me. I bring him to work with me sometimes. This time, he had worked with Yoni, helping him to talk. For a long while, Yoni had wanted to talk about the time when he was 10 years old. About the period of the adoption that fell apart, and the ground that opened up beneath him. But it was too difficult for him, so I brought some backup with me. Snoopy is a much better therapist than I am. All he does is lay his head down on you, and the whole world suddenly feels like a more tolerable place.

Snoopy now lifted his head. A familiar, timid knock on the door. Dani arrived. She seemed to be on the last bar of battery power, fading away. I held her tightly and didn’t let go.

“We’re not giving up, Dani. We’ll get through this together. I’m with you. I’ll stay with you until you can be there for yourself and process what has happened. Until you no longer have to vomit in order to defend yourself from what the world puts into you. Until we reach our goal − to be our own mothers and fathers.” It’s so difficult to reach that place, and even more difficult not to reach it, I thought to myself.

“There’s no way that I’ll get there. I’m already broken and crazy.”

“You’re deeply hurt, but you’re not broken and you’re surely not crazy.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’re repairable.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it.”

Dani sobbed silently. “But I’m running out of time. My time’s up, Rotem.” Her shoulders trembled. “I have nothing left. You can see that. I don’t know what to do. Please stop me. Why are you letting this go on? I have no more strength left.”

I held her hands, enveloping them with mine. Recharging her. “You’re not alone. You do have strength. You just can’t feel it right now. I’m feeling it for you. I can feel what’s threatening to drown you, and I also feel the dry land awaiting beneath it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I know the path, and I know you. If you manage to hate yourself less, and escape from the world less, then we’ll have a chance at living. We have to find a way to eat. We can’t live without providing the body with what it needs. Tell me what can enable you to do that, and we’ll find the way. I know that you want to believe me, that you want to believe in me, and I know that you’re incredibly scared of being disappointed again.”

Tell me what to do, her eyes pleaded.

“Believe. In me. In us. I know that it’s hard to do, and I know that you can do it. That we can do it.”

The sky was hidden by