Synchronicity: On the Rescue of Gilad Shalit

There is much too much synchronicity  in the air right now. It’s hard to breathe.  I am desperate for a mundane randomness in events but I find everywhere I turn there is a plethora of parallels, of metaphors; an abundance of symbols. There is no escaping the weight of the times in which we are living: one too many coincidences are no longer coincidences.

Tuesday Gilad Shalit is due to return home.

Being an artist, with a vivid imagination, I have spun many moments for him in my head:

The  cacophony of Hebrew pummeling his ears for the first time in five years.
The physical pain of daylight.
The peculiar and personal smell of his father’s neck.
More of something. Anything.
Music.
Privacy

Eating his favorite cake, a cake which surely Aviva is baking for him, measuring slowly, carefully, sifting the flour and sugar, crying, the salt from her tears a just substitute for the table salt the recipe requires. Wondering, as she stirs and mixes, what she will find, what sort of son is being handed back to her now, and where in the book of mothering are the directions for what lies ahead?