White Meat

The first day back after Pesach and I bunked off from the ulpan. I was awake before the alarm rang, but, well, I just didn’t want to go. I slept for another hour, before showering, dressing and going to Lechem Vehaverim. Yesterday’s bread binge wasn’t enough. My first croissant for over a week tasted very good.

I went to the beach, just two blocks from where I live. It was a glorious day, the sky clear, as blue as Paul Newman’s eyes. Not too many people there, either.

A small plane, a two-seater, maybe, private, not military, flew above and made a lazy somersault. Everyone’s eyes were on it, their heads moving with it like at a tennis match. It seemed, for the longest of moments, to stop at the top of the loop, before building speed again on the way down. It made another, then another, like a gymnast flip flopping on a mat. The buzz of the engine growing quieter as the plane climbed, louder as it came back down, right side up. It was joyous, this pilot showing off, loop after loop. There must have been fifteen, twenty, thirty in a row. Each time he’d come round and do it again, all no more than fifty feet above us at the lowest point, all over the same beach, the one I was standing on. Then, sadly, the plane turned back in the direction from which it had come, and went. I wanted to applaud. I wouldn’t have seen that at the ulpan. 

Today’s word: gul – wave – גל