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

worrying about my being sued isn’t a reason for living. Nor is making sure your grandmother’s heart doesn’t break again. So you protest. You can protect people and minimize the harm done to them, but that can’t come at your expense. You don’t have to tell anyone, if that’s what’s right for you. There are no set rules for this. We’ll listen carefully to any faint desire arising from within you, and we’ll encourage it to slowly expand, until it becomes a strong enough stream, one that no one can stop.”

“I haven’t wanted anything for so long that I’ve been cancelling out my needs and desires. I don’t really remember anymore.” Dani looked around her, searching for an answer in the pictures on one of the walls, or on the book shelves.

“Tell me about your dreams,” I asked her. “What did you want to be when you were a child?”

“When I experience deafening silence, or just before going to bed, I still imagine myself among a collection of animals. When I was young, they were crocodiles. A family of friendly crocodiles who cared for me, and mainly chatted with me. Later on, I’d picture myself like Mowgli, in a family of wolves, in the forest, in a cave. The mother wolf licked me and warmed me with her fur, and my cub siblings played with me. At another point, I’d imagine myself sprawled over a lion’s belly, and riding on the back of an elephant or a big black horse. I always imagined myself alone with the animals − one of them, but still human. A nature child. Dr. Doolittle, as Dad used to call me when I was young. I imagined that I understood the animals’ language, and I always seemed relaxed and happy. Nowadays these fantasies are shaped in a more realistic way. Now I imagine myself owning a big ranch, or a shelter for wounded and sick animals, or just a simple dog and cat shelter, like the place where I’d adopted Miko. I imagine a place of my own, full of animals, in nature, among mountains, and I’m in charge of everything there. My own little piece of heaven.” Dani spoke non-stop, without lifting her head. A flame was kindled within her. “Rotem, are you crying?”

I was moved when she talked about the atrocities she’d endured. It hurt me to hear it, but there was no room for tears. They could only weaken. Crying together is possible with a close friend, but I believe there’s almost never any room in therapy for the therapist’s tears. But this time, her description of finding a place of her own in the world and using it to bandage others’ wounds had brought me to tears that I couldn’t stop. Nor did I want to stop.

I also didn’t see any reason to. On the contrary, Dani deserved to see and know that she moved me. Throughout my years as a therapist, only one other patient had witnessed my crying. It was Jasmine, after her mother had suddenly passed away. She arrived at our session after the seven days of mourning with such pain that I couldn’t keep a safe distance from the vortex. I’d also found myself going down the pit with Dani in order to give her my hand and go back out together. I had lost sleep over that, but I’d never cried in front of her.

“Yes, Dani. I’m crying because that really is moving. How can we make it happen in reality?”

“I don’t know anything about it yet. I need to study.”

I’d embarrassed her a bit, but not overly. “Then what’s the first step? Where do we start?” I asked.

“I guess I could start by volunteering at one of those places that I dream about, and maybe take a course on animals. But I have no idea where, or what I should even study in order to get to what I want to accomplish − and not just for an academic degree.”

“Who can help you with that?”

“Ummm, I’ll ask Tal. She used to have a friend, Enrique, whose family had a place like that. We used to call him “Encouraging Enrique.” We’ll see, maybe that’ll work for me too.”

 

Rotem Golan Goes to the Golan

I went on a trip by myself. After the corona quarantine, I drove to Kiryat Shemona to visit my parents, since I hadn’t managed to squeeze that in during the Vipassana retreat. After those intense 11 days, which were the biggest investment I’d ever made in Emily, I hurried straight back to Yotam.

After the visit to my parents, I decided to go see Nahal Zavitan, a river I hadn’t been to since high school. On our school trip, Liran and Eliran, the class’s inseparable pot-heads, sat bunched up on the back seat of the bus with beer cans they’d snuck in, and throughout the entire ride they sang, “Rotem Golan goes to the Golan,” among other original hits such as “Our driver’s great, he’ll take us to Kuwait. Our driver’s a pal, he’ll take us to Senegal.”

“Shut up!” Revital screamed at them, her migraine driving her crazy. “May the Lord take you already!” Three years later, they both died during a training accident in the army. Revital cried on my shoulder throughout their funeral, even blowing her nose into my shirt. It wasn’t just the mourners who threw away the shirts that the rabbis tore according to the Jewish ritual. Even I tossed out a relatively new black blouse. Is this seriously what you’re thinking about right now? So what if your blouse is ruined? You deserve it! Who shows up at a funeral without tissues?

I parked my car and started walking. The old familiar trail was no longer there. It was changed due to landslides that had blocked the path, and I chose the shorter route. There wasn’t much time left until dark, and the nature reserves all close before sundown. At the beginning of the route, the cliffs seemed incredibly high.