Towers Of Tuna

Gila Green –

“You don’t have to buy anymore tuna,” my 19 year old daughter said. “We have enough here for a…”

She declined finishing her sentence.

It was the day after Passover, in Israel, ‘Isru Chag,’ and we were turning the kitchen back into an every day one, a chametz kitchen.

But there was all this tuna, towering, bursting, cramming.

In my mind I finished my daughter’s sentence: enough for a war.

We had stocked up on tuna and other cans as usual, buying extra because my daughter takes some to Tel Aviv where she is in her National Service year.

Then there was the war stock of cans but it had all seemed to have disappeared over the months—except for the tuna. Tuna and water was all that was left until Passover, when we had to clean out the bomb shelter.

But on the Passover holiday itself, we don’t eat the kitnyot oil we were so heavily stocked on, so we had replaced it all with tuna in water and now there was enough tuna in water for Passover during a war, I guess. Plus, the non-Passover oily canned fish.

“So you want this back in the bomb shelter?” my daughter asked, as though this is a normal day-after-Passover question. You know, are we going to finish this matzah? What happened to those dish towels and should we restock the bomb shelter?

“No, don’t answer.” My daughter is Organization Queen. “There’s no room for it in this kitchen, in any kitchen and I’m not taking any to Tel Aviv with me before you ask. I’ll come home if there’s a…”

Neither of us finishes the sentence. Besides, we were too busy protecting ourselves with towers of tuna.

Gila Green, novelist, wrote ‘Towers of Tuna’ in our May 17th Humor Workshop.