Good Sports

When we were in Prague last year, I was not as prepared as I usually am at playing the ‘travel agent / tour guide’. I had not had time to do my usual homework, so I was winging it. In the morning, I would study the travel guides and decide what we would see and our route. My boys seemed to just expect this and would sleep in while I poured over maps, travel guides and pamphlets. Inevitably, I would upset their ‘beauty sleep’ and they would kick me out of the hotel room. I would take my stuff and go down to the lobby and map out our day. I had multiple people mention that my setup looked like a ‘war room’. I always replied that ‘they had no idea …..’. I was getting less and less sleep doing this, getting exhausted, frustrated, and wondering how I got the ‘travel agent’ hat in the first place.

On Friday, the last day we were exploring the city, I was exhausted, but came up with a great tour: the Old Jewish Cemetery on our way to a boat that would take us up and down the river, then … somewhere, I can’t remember. We could not see the cemetery as we walked by due to a very tall wall, so I scratched that off the list. Dissapointed since it had a fantastic history, was very unique and I wanted photos ... I was frustrated, but off we went to the boat. There were some buildings I wanted to take photos of and the lady I spoke with promised me that the boat went there, so I was ready. When the boat did not go down that far … somehow …. I lost it. I was done – I think because I was exhausted, but I had a meltdown and told my guys that I was done with this shitty city, being a shitty tour guide and that I was tired and going back to the hotel to take a nap. I told them (I am sure in a very kindly manner) that they could do whatever they wanted. I didn’t care – handed my camera to Ryan and stormed off. They had that startled, nervous, scared look of ‘mom went off her meds’ again…

After getting some sleep, I felt better and we hooked up for dinner. Knowing that I had been mad at everything, especially them for not helping and being lazy butts, they were cautious around me and Gary ‘forced’ me into purchasing a beautiful necklace and earring set. They apologized and said it was not fair to assume that I would do all the heavy lifting.

They cautiously started recounting their day. To my amazement, they followed my ‘tour’ as far as I had planned it. They even went back to the Jewish cemetery – to get photos for me.
I had decided that we would not go in since the men would need to wear the traditional Jewish cap (yarmulke) and I was not going to ask them to do that. But … in they went complete with headgear. I thought it would be a neat thing to have a photo of them, but they said they did not take photos of each other, just the stones. The reason I wanted to take photos of the cemetery was because of the history:

“The Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov, the Jewish Quarter, was created in the 15th century when Jews were forbidden to bury their dead outside their own district. Space was scarce, so bodies were buried on top of each other in an estimated 12 layers. Over the centuries, lopsided tombstones formed unruly, poetic groupings.

The surrealist author Franz Kafka enjoyed moments of quiet reflection in the old cemetery. However, his own grave lies across town in the New Jewish Cemetery. That burial ground is half empty because the generation it was built for was transported to Nazi death camps.”
Going through my photos, I had many photos of the stacked headstones, but I found a gem:

It is one of my favorites. I thought it was nice that they spent the day taking photos of things for me because I was missing it while I slept.