Today I baked a cake

Due to the historic events of the day, there was no way I could write about Vegan MoFo, recipes, my back pain, marathon training, or weight loss.

Today Gilad Shalit came home.  Five years ago he was kidnapped and has been held by Hamas in unknown conditions without even a peek allowed to the Red Cross.  Today he is back in the arms of his family and his country.  The emotion we all feel is beyond words.  Yes, the deal the Israeli government had to make to win his freedom is horrible and truly disgusting.  Yes, the world continues to condem my country in ways that shock me in their ignorance and unfairness.

But today, we bring our son home alive and seemingly OK.  And today, that is all that matters.

The first photos we saw of Gilad stepping out of a car in Egypt were met with our collective gasp, every female in my twitter stream whispered “oh my goodness! he is so thin!”  We felt it like a knife in our hearts.  And sure enough, a great deal of attention on the non-stop news footage has been given to re-feeding him.  We are all thinking “soon he will be at home and his mother will feed him again.”

In my work, I treat people who are not well because, in most cases, they have too much food, too many choices, too much confusion, too many calories, too much dietary fat.  We live in a remarkable time in history where we actually have more than enough food to eat.  It turns out that we get just as sick from too much as we do from too little. Who would have thought the balance would be so delicate?

As mothers, most of us today, are in the very lucky position of being able to fill our children’s bellies each day.  We can choose to fill them with junk food, sugar and processed food.  We can choose to fill them with healthy whole foods.  Or we can choose a path somewhere in the middle.  Yet we tend to take this abundance for granted.  We grumble through that endless “whatever will I make for dinner tonight” night after night, without pausing to think how lucky we are to have such a dilemma.

For 5 years, Aviva Shalit did not have this privilege.  The mothers of the other 2 soldiers in Gilad’s tank that day will never have the chance to feed their children again.  Nor will the mothers of the terror victims, whose murderers were set free today.  Mothers of sick children and anorexics, mothers living in poverty or in places that lack our abundance, mothers who have not been able to conceive or carry a child to term, all probably dream of what it would be like to have what we have, to put spoon to mouth, to pile food on a table.  We are truly blessed.

As you face your kitchen tonight, I’d like to suggest that you stop for a moment and remember your bounty, your luck, and your privilege.  I know I will.  In fact, I made this:

I have never been prouder of my decision to immigrate to Israel than I was today.

Today we brought one boy home.

Today I baked him a cake.

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