When Eitan and I met, he made up a game called “pick a year.”
We were living in different countries, and for four months, we got to know each other one story at a time — over the phone, usually late at night. One of us would say a year - any year - and the other would tell a story from it. That was it. No rules, no structure, just slowly piecing together a picture of someone’s life. Sometimes the stories were funny or random, sometimes painful, sometimes surprisingly honest. It became a way of moving closer across the distance. One year at a time.
For a while, the book I was writing had a working title: Cold Hands, Warm Heart. It was something my grandma used to say, and I was attached to it for sentimental reasons. But then a beta reader told me she really loved the book, but if I didn’t change the lame title, she wouldn’t buy it. Fair enough 😂
So I started thinking about what the book is actually about - what holds it together.
At the center of it is a mother and son who are trying to reach each other after years of silence. They start playing the same game - “pick a year” - not as a cute couple thing, but as a last-ditch attempt to rebuild something real before time runs out. That game becomes their way of telling the truth, story by story, across everything that’s been left unsaid.
There’s a Yiddish proverb I came across along the way:
Mit a lefl ken men dem yam nit oys’shepn.
You can’t empty the sea with a spoon.
And yet, that’s what they’re trying to do. That’s what we all try to do when we tell the truth to someone we love. It's slow. It feels ridiculous sometimes. But it’s the only way to get across.
So the title became The Spoon and the Sea.
It felt right. It held the weight of the book without trying too hard. It reminded me of how the deepest connections are built: one story, one year, one spoonful at a time.