2012 In Review
This year Didi and I decided to divide the pleasure of
wishing you all a good holiday season and a Happy New Year: I am writing this
summary of the highlights of the year for us while Didi will add a personal
note and do the mailing:
It is now a tradition: Since the two of us retired, every
year around mid November we head to California to stay with our son’s family in
San Jose. There we also get together with the families of our two Kanaaneh nephews
in the SF Bay area. About a month later we join our Daughter’s family for their
winter vacation. That is how we found ourselves in Lima, the Peruvian Andes and
the Amazon at the start of 2012 and swimming with the dolphins off the Kona
coast of the Big Island of Hawaii today as we bid goodbye to the same year.
I usually write a piece on my blog about every foreign
country we visit. In the case of Peru I experimented with fictionalizing my
impressions because it fit well with an assignment I had as a fellow for the
2011-12 academic year at the Writers’ Institute at CUNY. Here is the link to
that piece for those who have the interest and the time:
For the rest of that winter vacation I returned home to Arrabeh,
our village in Galilee, for a couple of weeks to tend our garden and check on
friends and relatives. It was a sad visit during which I lost two nephews, one
who was my namesake and the other, a teenager, who was my volunteer gardening
helper. I also committed this experience to my blog. Especially those among you
who are interested in Palestinian village culture may want to read it at:
Shortly after
returning to NY, Didi left to California to help with the care of Zara, Ty and
Katherine’s new daughter and our fifth grandchild. I continued to enjoy the instructive,
intriguing and invigorating input of my dozen fellow writers and instructors at
the WI till mid-May when I travelled to join the families of both of our
children when all of us congregated at a California beach to meet Zara for the
first time and to celebrate my 75th birthday. From there we returned
home to Galilee. At home I continued the task of rewriting my novel, the reason
I had enlisted in the WI for the one academic year in NY. During that period
Didi joined the Chinatown YMCA and shed off a good number of pounds doing regular
exercises from swimming to Zumba. In Arrabeh we both reverted to gardening and the
treadmill.
In July Rhoda and her two daughters arrived for their annual
visit to family and friends at the height of the wedding season in the village.
After few such celebrations in the Kanaaneh clan we drove our car to Jordan for
a weeklong sojourn at the Dead Sea and Petra in temperatures of above 110 F in
the shade. Because of the new baby, Ty and his family did not make it for the
obligatory annual get-together in Arrabeh. Instead we all met for two week at a
rented vacation mansion in Woodstock, NY where the four children swam and
frolicked to their hearts’ content and did their best to teach us, the
grandparents, the art of the hula-hoop to Malaika’s delight as a budding
photographer.
For the remaining couple of months we visited with relatives
and friends, tended our garden, replenished our flock of chickens that had been
decimated by a vicious mongoose and invested in a large electric dehydrator to
handle the plentiful summer fruits. Didi waxed inventive with fig, grape and
persimmon fruit leather preparations. In the meantime I embarked on a set of
basic repairs including two dental implants and a bunion surgery before
returning to San Jose for the start of a new cycle.
With our Best Wishes.
Hatim and Didi Kanaaneh
P.S.
Hatim didn’t mention that he has continued to work on his
“Palestinian novel” honing it with his newly acquired writing skills! If you happen to know of a suitable literary
agent, let him know! Didi
