Evacuees

It’s been a year. Despite others’ minimalization, rationalization, or denial of reality, the ill effects of war continue to impact us. Some of those bearings are enormous—too many of us have experienced or have had dear ones experience levayas, shiva houses, and rehabilitation centers. Others of our altered comportments are subtle, including the increase in cost of  produce and the currently odd employee pool (since many workers have died, been called to the front lines, or have otherwise gone missing, rosters have become atypical.)

In my family’s life, it’s flickers that remind us of the larger, ongoing blaze. One such flash occurred recently, during the twenty-fourish hours, when Hubby and I rented a hotel room. We had scheduled our weeklong staycation during the span after the start of the school year but before the Yomim Noraim as we don’t enjoy crowds. Sadly, not all of the hotel guests shared our temporal luxury.

They couldn’t choose quiet or untaxed hours. Their utilization of the venue’s dining hall, that is, their taking meals in the same building in which they slept, was far less serendipitous than compulsory.

Sometimes, I forget we’re in the midst of a war.

Anyway, I had urged my spouse to agree to dine when the hall opened so that we could maximize our private quiet hours (I can’t, alternatively, skip meals due to health issues.) Accordingly, counter to community norms, we arrived within a half hour of the start of dinner service. Regrettable, we encountered a remarkable scene.

Small children were running through the dining area. What’s more, those wee ones commanded two to four tables per family. Some of those seat clusters were occupied by only one, or, at most, two youngsters. Additionally, many of those tykes were literally screaming.

When Hubs and I finally located seats free of children and their assorted detritus, we were not yet fully settled. More exactly, next to us, by herself, sat a preschooler, who insisted on sitting near, not with, her mom. Furthermore, that little lass wouldn’t cease emitting loud, truly ear-piercing sounds.

I observed her parent threaten her and then, when intimidation failed, bribe her with soup almonds and cake. The girl ignored the soup garnishes. However, the cake quieted her for a minute or two since she enjoyed mashing it and then running her hands through that pulp.

BH, b’ayin tova, I have children. I have grandchildren. As well, I’ve long since gained a local sensibility concerning cooperative care giving. Yet, I said nothing to the child or to her mother.

After my dear one and I finished our salads and began our entrees, I comprehended a little bit more about the situation in which we found ourselves. The child’s mom had other youths in her care. More significantly, though, she was parenting them without their father. In fact, the other moms seated with the screamer’s parent, too, were without menfolk.

Mere tens of minutes later, the thunderous child, her brothers and sisters, and her mother left the dining room. Others of the female-fronted families, likewise, left.

Still, a few of those women, before exiting, revisited to the buffet to fill sandwich bags with food, notwithstanding the posted sign in the dining room that stated that no comestibles were to go beyond its threshold.

In other places, at other times, I’ve struggled when observing folks help themselves to “doggy bags” whether they stuffed rolls into purses and pockets, wrapped potatoes in napkins, or found more inventive mens to abscond with mealtime goodies. I thought the behavior might be classified as stealing and was convinced that anyone who practiced it was off the derech?

So, I asked my rabbi a formal shaila about how I should, if at all, respond when witnessing such goings-on. He told me two things. First, unfortunately, such actions are customary, here. Hotels and the like intentionally put out individual yoghurt cartons and pieces of whole fruit to thusly accommodate their patrons. Second, guesthouses anticipate that food will leave their dining rooms. They regard the cost of such meal extensions as an operating expense. It seems that management’s neither surprised nor bothered by these acts.

The establishment at which my dear one and I were staying upped the ante for unscheduled carryouts. Ostensibly, management was supplying sandwich bags but was removing them from the dining area after those families finished their meals.

Consider that during the following morning, when breakfast, a meal included in all guests’ stay, was served, the situation was different. There were no screaming kids (albeit Hubs and I waited to eat until two hours after the hall opened figuring the children would, by then, be at school) and there was no industrial-sized box of takeaway bags.

Dinner, which had been purchased by few transient guests, but was routine for the extended one, had included spaghetti, precut raw veggies and other child-friendly fare. Breakfast, conversely, had featured “fancy,” adult offerings including hard cheeses, a rack of honeycomb, an expresso machine, etcetera.

Further, the night before, when my partner and I had left the restaurant, we had encountered, in the lobby, a woman wheeling two cages full of bunnies. She gestured to the cages and then whispering, “for the kids.” Apparently, the hotel’s mezzanine had been repurposed as a gan, i.e., as a preschool, for the youngest long-term guests and, daily, it was used, when the older kids returned from school, for activities meant to enliven, or else redirect, the spirits of all the youths.

After breakfast, when we got off the elevator to go back to our room for our final, blissful hotel-based hours, Hubby and I again passed items that had been left in the hall earlier. Outside of one room stood a drying rack filled with random, small-sized clothing. Two kid-sized bikes were parked next to it.

When we had first walked by those belongings, I had considered them the property of visitors who were able to extend their summer because their school year started after ours. I had been mistaken.

Even nice hotels’ rooms can feel small. Whereas my spouse and I tend to travel light; a backpack apiece to hold our seforim, clothes, and toiletries, I can’t imagine being confined to a hotel room for nearly a year, with multiple offspring, when a spouse is absent. I also can’t imagine having to be evacuated to a hotel, even an upscale one.

The High Holidays are coming. The new school year has already started. All of that normalcy aside, Am Yisrael is still fighting an existential war. Let’s not forget that this conflict mercilessly impacts families.

May Hashem watch over the evacuees and gift them with untold happiness! May He bring peace to us all!