I collected the smallest grandchild from preschool yesterday as usual, yesterday being Thursday. All the children came out with a collection of stuff they had made over the day, a curious mix of religious and profane: an Easter bunny mask, which some wore on their face but which Grandson Number Two wore on the top of his head, a home-made, thin card basket, nicely painted, containing a rice crispy cake, a small chocolate egg, chocolate coins and strips of yellow tissue paper, which I suggested was supposed to be straw but the small boy assured me was hay, and an Easter Card.
He explained about the contents of the basket: “Mrs Deaken made the cakes but we decorated them with mini-eggs. One mini-egg is for me and the other is for you. The little chocolate egg is for Lydia (his sister) and the cake is for everyone to share when we get to your house.”
Then he told me about the card. “The flowers are made of paint but it’s dry now’, he assured me, “and the cross is made from lolly sticks.” “Is the card for Mummy?” I asked him. “Oh, no,” he replied, “It’s for Jesus, so he knows me.” Hmm, I wonder what they have been teaching him at preschool. It is a church school, Holy Trinity, after all, but many of the primary schools around here are connected to one or other of the churches in the vicinity. His sister attends St. Mary’s, in nearby greenfield.
Instead of catching the bus to my house we caught one in the opposite direction so that we could meet his mother and sister in Uppermill for an eye test. He was a little disgruntled at this. Later I discovered it was because he had decided he didn’t want to have his eyes tested. He told me this when we arrived at the optician’s and he refused to go inside! Between us the optician and I persuaded him to join Mummy and big sister, who had just completed her eye test and told me, “I’m perfect!” The small boy cooperated for most of the eye test but was not pleased with the various bits of machinery they wanted to subject him to.
The next hurdle was getting home from Uppermill. Mummy had the car but the small boy insisted that he wanted to go by bus, part of his usual Thursday Routine being to travel by bus to Grandma’s house. Big sister opted to join us. They really wanted Mummy to come on the bus too but her car was in Uppermill. In the bus shelter they both showed off the Easter songs they had learnt at their respective schools, not too loudly as there were other people waiting.
We should have had a 10 minute wait, at least, for our bus, but another bus, the little shuttle bus that goes via Diggle and detours round just about every possible housing estate en route, arrived running very late so we hopped on board. The small girl proudly paid her own fare, the small boy still travels free, and I have an old biddy bus pass! We had to sit at the back, of course! The bus driver rattled along at speed, making up for lost time and ignoring 20mph speed limits! A veritable roller coaster, to the delight of the small people.
We talked about holidays. They are about to have a week or more in Texas. Great excitement. The small boy would like us all to holiday together. With the older siblings too. And with the southern branch of the family, of course, as he loves his big cousin. And maybe the Southport people? And what about the Spanish cousins? That’s getting close to 20 of us! We would need a mansion!
Meanwhile, over in Gaza, family groups of 20 or so are living together in small temporary accommodation, desperately trying to find food and hoping against hope that they won’t be bombed out of this shelter. For despite UN resolutions bombing and shelling goes on.
Today I read about a further problem for the war torn region: an environmental crisis on top of everything else. Farms and olive groves have been destroyed, the land is polluted, the very air they breathe is polluted as what cooking can go on is done on open fires, and there are traffic fumes as well.
Ironically enough it is a Palestinian, Vivien Sansour, who might be helping feed the world through the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library, in Hudson, a project that began in 2016 to conserve Palestinian heritage and culture by saving heirloom seed varieties and telling the stories and history from which they emerged.
“The mission of the seed library is to revitalize and conserve a living archive of our heirloom seeds,” said Sansour. “Not just for Palestine, but also for the world. The world is in a hospice state and we need all the different tools and biodiversity we can in order to adapt.”
Sansour’s love for edible plants was born in Beit Jala in the West Bank, where she spent many formative childhood years. She remembers Beit Jala when it was still more a small village than a town, replete with terrace gardens full of stone fruits, olives, artichokes and herbs. “My life was such a beautiful bouquet of diversity all the time in terms of plant life,” she said. But as time went on, that biological diversity began to narrow as the climate crisis upended longstanding growing cycles, Israeli settlements encroached on the land and agribusinesses pushed local growers away from the seed varieties that had been passed down for generations.
Here’s another link to an article about her work, dating back to 2021, before the current madness ensued.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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