For you

[This is what I ended up writing for the ceremony]

You call me Pip, I call you Tig and we know each other so well. I am supposed to write something for you and it’s ridiculous. How can I do this? This isn’t right, I should be able to pick up the phone and ring you as usual. I just came back from Canada, have lots of things to tell you. I actually forgot and called your room instead of your parents just now. I bought 115 books and thought of you every single time, how we used to visit every second-hand bookstore around the kibbutz and just buy books, and then end the hunting expedition with some nice oily junk food. I need to be able to email you and then get annoyed because you take so long to answer me. You need to be able to do the same because I am as lazy as you are. You need to be able to say “eggs” in Hebrew, Portuguese and English and keep repeating it until I turn green with nausea and then you laugh because it never gets old, you always make my stomach turn. Those disgusting fried eggs of yours you can eat every single day, without getting tired of them. You need to be able to take a long nap in the afternoon and then fall asleep easily at night, thereby irritating me and my insomnia majorly. We need to be able to go looking for birds to photograph, and snakes and furry creatures. Who else would bring me a huge live spider from Haifa in a Tupperware with holes just because you knew I’d love it? When we were still together you used to joke that other boyfriends give their girlfriends flowers, and you brought me dead scorpions from the avocado field. Much better than flowers, isn’t it. You have been my best friend for years. My mother is still heartbroken we broke up and became just friends because she adores you and would love to properly have you in the family. But we work out better as just friends. I have missed you every single day I was away. I want to ring you and read excerpts from Douglas Adams’ books like we used to do and laugh over the same lines every time. I want you to ring me and tell me some silly joke you know I’ll like, I want to listen to you complain about how boring school is and how hot it is in Israel - and you do it on purpose too because I am always cold. You are the most decent and generous man I ever met, you are truly too good to be true. I had the best time in Israel with you and couldn’t wait for you to come visit me again. I would have come to visit you now instead of going to Canada but it was unthinkable to go to Israel while you were away, it wouldn’t be right. Israel is you, every layer of it. And I need your help now, because I am Pip, you are Tig, and I don’t know how to do this without you.