Jerusalem Tales – A Blog by Sarah Sassoon

I’m back. I missed blogging as I took a long, social media hiatus. I kept writing sentences in my head – as I drove in beeping traffic, read the news, walked down the curving Jerusalem streets, discussed politics with the Israeli Parliament at my local coffee shop, experimented with new, delicious recipes, and especially when I took the family ice skating yesterday at this season’s Jerusalem IceEat venue.

I have to write about the IceEat ice skating rink because it was half empty and needs to be advertised for three reasons.

1) It gets the children off their screens and onto their feet, to kick up the ice for great family time.

2) The Jerusalem Municipality has invested in making this venue a top-notch, fun, affordable eating, and ice skating experience. With events such as Pavlova on Ice and group sing-alongs. So check out the website and share it with your friends.

3) Most of all, who would have thought that so much can be learned from slipping and sliding on ice.

Last night my children ice skated for the third time in their lives. Ice skating is a novelty for these hotter climates. In fact, we call it bum-skating at our house. So when they got their skates on and took to the ice, to my surprised delight, only the six years old was bum-skating. The older boys were on their feet and zooming away. Not all skaters were as blessed, there was one guy, about my age – who was holding onto a penguin, designed for littlies who are just beginning. I felt sorry for this adult beginner pushing the penguin along. And then I felt very sorry for him when he let go of the penguin and fell and fell and fell – bum-skating all the way.

After about half an hour of observing him as he got up, and got up, and got up, my pity transformed into avid admiration. This was a guy who was going to skate at all costs, sore bum and all. And the ice rink with the swirling, icy lines of dancing skates became a metaphor for life – of how we all dream of becoming better – in my case – a more connected mother, more proficient at Hebrew, a better writer who submits her work. We all have our mountains to climb, and to do it we need to bum-skate a bit (or a lot) until we get to the top.

To end my metaphor, I also fell last night. It wasn’t too bad, I had a lot of padding. My boys got it on video and hyena laughed all the way home as they watched it over and over again. Their mum bum-skating on ice. What to do but get up – that’s life!

To book IceEat go to – http://ice-eat.itraveljerusalem.com