Our First Baby - A personal story about Freedom, Consequences and Responsibilty (The ecoTrain speaks "What is Freedom? Am I Free?" @stillgideon)

I've been giving a lot of thought to the question we are discussing on ecoTrain this week - What is freedom? - And especially to the additional question - Am I Free? It's caused me a lot of very deep reflection on my life, my actions, the way I live, the choices I've made and how it relates to the idea of freedom.

I started to write a list of ways that I am free and ways that I'm not. That seemed to be the most honest and practical way to go about answering the question. It soon became clear that in many ways I am incredibly free and should count my blessings every day for the freedoms that I enjoy - freedoms that many people around the world can only dream of.

Nobody is trying to kill me. I don't have to pass through checkpoints every day. I am free to express myself. I am not living in abject poverty. Ok, the country I live in seems to be always on the verge of war. If I want to leave the country there is only one way in and out, which is strictly controlled and no one can come or go without the right papers. I am fortunate to have the right papers. There are certain opinions I need to keep to myself, within the limits of free expression, if I want to avoid trouble. I have debts and haven't taken a real holiday in many years, because I just can't afford such leisure activities. But we (me and my family) always have food on the table, we have a house to live in, we live as much as possible outside of mainstream systems of control.. we are free.

Freedom, to me, doesn't seem to be absolute. In some ways I am free, in other ways I am not. It seems to me, as I look back at my life and the choices I've made (freedom of choice is a freedom in itself) that most of the ways that I'm not free come down to my own decisions - so even if I'm not free, it is really because I am.

Ultimately, I think freedom is a state of mind. Innocent people spending time in prison in solitary confinement have discovered this - but that is something I hope never to have to test for myself.

In this story I'm about to tell, the greatest freedom I knew was during the time I was travelling on my bicycle, playing music in the streets for money. I had no home, but for a plastic sheet I would stretch between trees for shelter and no possessions, but for what I could carry in my panniers. I could go anywhere I wanted, or stay where I was, completely for free - I had no rent to pay, no insurance, no travel costs. But really, as you will see, as the story progresses, I became in many ways less free.. but at the same time, I was always free because the choices I made were free choices.

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It seems like a long time ago now.. I even forgot the order of events, but now I remember it went like this:

When I met Galit, I was travelling around on my bicycle.. I'd been travelling with two friends from England, cycling around Europe and playing music in the streets together. After a while in Greece we all went our separate ways. I decided to get on a boat and go and visit my brother who lived in Tel Aviv. After a couple of months there I decided to set off and cycle round Israel a bit, so I went down to Eilat and then back up the Jordan valley to Jerusalem. This was in the spring of 2001.

Jerusalem was a good place to be a wandering busker. I found a nice place in the park to camp at night and in the day I went to the pedestrian area in the city to play music. I'd get enough money for food and there were plenty of eccentric and interesting people about.

After I'd been doing that for a couple of weeks, Galit came wandering through the park. She was looking for her dog, which had run off. She says that her heart almost stopped when she saw me sitting there by my fire in the place where she always sat to pray and meditate. She came and asked me if I'd seen her dog. I said no and invited her for a cup of tea...

The rest, as they say, is history. We were almost inseperable for the next 14 years. Literally, almost never apart.

She was looking to get out of Jerusalem and away from her no-good boyfriend at the time who she was living with and basically supporting. She'd heard of a remote place in Galilee where someone was looking for a volunteer or two to take care of the running of some guesthouse chalets in return for a place to live and basic expenses. It took a couple of weeks to make the arrangements and then we were living together in a charming shack on a goat farm in Galilee.

We lived there for a few months, making a little home for ourselves, living a simple life, cleaning and tidying the chalets, making the beds and cooking breakfasts for the guests. It wasn't much work, so we had a lot of time for just being young lovers.

Summer drew on. I found it very hot and began to pine away for the cool, green of England. I'd been away for about a year and hadn't felt a drop of rain for about six months. That was the hardest thing for me. It took me about five years of living here before I really understood that it doesn't rain here at all in the summer.

I was also quite sick of the Israeli society with it latent racism and unfair division between jews and arabs, and I think Galit was too. At least she said she was, and seemed as eager as I was to leave. There was also this guitar making course which I was hoping to do, which started in September. So in the late summer we packed our bags, got on a boat to Greece and hitch hiked our way to England.

The journey was hard for her. I'd been quite a hardcore traveller for years, sleeping out in all sorts of weather with the bare minimum of equipment, often hiking for miles and barely eating. I kind of expected her to be the same, but she got tired more easily and complained of the hardship. Of course, the fact that she was pregnant at the time no doubt made it harder for her, but neither of us knew that at the time.

When we got to England we stayed at my parents house. My family were very welcoming and everyone was curious and excited to see this tall exotic girl I'd brought back with me from my travels. People remarked that we could have been brother and sister, there was something so similar about us. Really, that was what we were like, perhaps more than husband and wife.
I took her round the country to go and visit my friends in various towns. She got on well with Eleni who is from Greece, and who knew how to offer real, warm mediterranean hospitality, but for the most part, I think she found most of my friends, and England itself, strange and cold.

After a while of not having any periods we decided that a pregnancy test might be a good idea. It came out positive. From that moment, in my memory, things are quite a blur...

I don't think there was really much question of her having an abortion. Obviously, deep down, I knew I was totally unprepared to be a parent, but then so are most people, until it happens. I was open to anything in life and prepared to take responsibility for my actions, no matter how irresponsible. If she decided to keep the baby I'd stand by her decision and stand by her. These things are decided by fate, it somehow felt.

It wasn't easy to get a doctor's appointment, because she was foreign and not an EU citizen. The doctor we saw barely checked her at all and didn't send her for an ultrasound scan, even though she was at least 3 months pregnant at the time.

We told the family who were quite shocked, I expect, but not angry or upset.. or if they were they didn't show it. Maybe not even shocked, because they knew me and my impulsive propensity for making unwise ill thought out choices in life.
Galit's dad was insistent that we should be married as soon as possible. I don't know if it was because he was worried about what people would say or that he wanted some guarantee that I was going to stand by his daughter. I didn't want to get married at all, not because I didn't love Galit, but because I don't like institutions and so felt it would be hypocritical of me to go through with a ceremony I didn't believe in. It wasn't very romantic of me to be so reluctant to get married.. to basically be forced into it.. but I agreed, mainly out of respect for her parents and to show that I was a man of honour.

About two or three weeks later we got married at my parents synagogue. It was nice enough, but rather strange and kind of embarrassing. Lots of my friends came from all over the country, and we had a very good party at my parents house with lots of music and a big fire.

One thing that sticks in my mind was a bizarre episode with the wedding ring. My grandma on my dad's side died when I was very young. I don't remember her at all. My dad decided to give Galit his mum's wedding ring. It was very meaningful, obviously. But no sooner had she tried it on, it completely vanished. I mean, she must have taken it off and put it down somewhere, but it completely disappeared and has never been seen since - even though we looked absolutely everywhere for it.

By this time autumn was turning to winter and Galit realised that she had to be back in Israel to have the baby in her homeland with her own family around her. So off we went, back to Jerusalem, having decided to start our family life there. Galit's dad had found us a nice little flat to rent and had arranged a big party for all the friends and family there. That was also a bit strange, not least because it was in a big meat restaurant and we're both vegetarians, but all in all, it was nice to meet all of the people and have a celebration.

It must have been around the end of november by the time galit got her first ultrasound scan. By that time she was about five or six months pregnant. As soon as the doctor saw the scan, it was obvious that something was wrong. The baby hadn't developed properly and had no chance of survival at all outside of the womb. It was a condition, possibly caused by lack of folic acid in her diet, possibly from bacteria from the goats. Or just one of those things, or a combination of many factors. It would have been much less traumatic if she'd had a scan much earlier, but that's not the way it went.

Well, you probably know enough about these things to understand that having an abortion at that late stage isn't pleasant at all.

We spent most of that winter in our flat in Jerusalem crying and feeling quite lost. We sat in cafes a lot, not talking much, working our way through the money people had given us for our wedding.

When springtime came around we were both ready to get out of there. Galit wanted to go to India, but I was reluctant, mostly because I find the poverty very hard to deal with. I also still had it in my mind to go and do this guitar making course, which I'd been planning on doing since before I set off on my bicycle with my friends. In fact, I had been just about to start the course when my friends showed up on their bikes at my parents house where I was visiting and invited me to join them for an adventure.

So instead of going to India, we went back again to England and with the last of our money, bought a cheap van, painted it green and spent the spring and summer travelling all over England in it. It was a good trip and this time Galit really got to feel a deep connection with the country I come from - though she never forgave me for not taking her to India.

By the time I started the guitar making course in September that year, after travelling around all summer, she was pregnant again, this time with Noah.

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Click on the picture at the top of the page to hear 'If I Were Free' by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

"I saw that you and I forever have been free
The light became too heavy and we fell into a dream"

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Check out this weeks ecoTrain highlights, with 14 amazing passengers on board!

https://steemit.com/life/@eco-alex/eco-train-highlights-27th-july-2nd-august-2017-great-original-content-here