a very long time ago

and it seems, in a remote universe, there were list-servs that seemed to function as today's social networking systems do. one of these was parent-l out of a university in Australia. I don't know when I joined that group, but it was sometime between 1991 and 1994 since I know I was not connected for Shaked's first year and I was when Matan was born. so this group of mamas (way before mama-blogging) was pretty much into attachment parenting and I found support there day and night. since I lived in Israel, it was truly helpful to find people in my time zone more or less. not everyone lived in north america. there are still traces -- we made a quilt for Bonnie who died in 1997, there were t-shirts and photo albums. but this week I was caught off guard since I hadn't really kept up with anyone from the group, to see that Katie Granju's son Henry died. reading through the comments there are, of course, many many people I don't know, but there are also traces: dawn h-s and petra and aimee and others.

not sure where I'm going with this. it was ironic that facebook was banned for now, but the earliest internet connections are still somehow viable. added to the sadness of Henry's death was that there was a second student suicide this week at Matan and Shaked's high school in MN. while they're currently somewhat cutoff from info, I'm hearing about it through the parent information emails that I get from the school.

main point: I need to hug those kids and talk to them and listen to them. I think I told Shaked every hour how glad I was to see her here with me. now she can picture where Matan and I have been and got a little bit of the experience.



we may not have spent as much time poolside as we thought we'd get, but I think her experience was incredibly rich for having the internship that she did. stressful, true, but she saw so much and was able to contribute to the project with the data she gathered on those site visits.

ok, I'll open a different post to catch up this week.