On The Move

I am packing, again, like all the others times I've packed and unpacked and repacked lately. I packed in June and moved out of my apartment on Judah Street, putting most of my things into storage and taking three bags of clothes and a few boxes of books to camp. I packed in August, twice, making two trips from camp back to the East Bay and moving more stuff into storage while at the same time moving myself into the extra bedroom at Mark and Rebecca's (bless them). I packed and unpacked and repacked, things to stay in Alameda all year and things to come with me to Africa in February and things to come to New Hampshire for the wedding and things to come with me to Israel, and I left Berkeley with two bags and a daypack. I unpacked everything again in Waterville Valley, all over the extra bed in my bedroom at Rebecca's family's home there, and I left a bag of things behind to be brought back to Berkeley at some point. All that was left I packed into my suitcase and my REI backpack, weighed it with the help of Ido, prepared to pay the overweight baggage fee, and left for Israel.

I have been in Jerusalem exactly five weeks. Tonight as I get off the bus to go to ulpan it will be the same time of evening that I got off the sherut (shared van from the airport) and piled my bags onto the curb of HaHaganah Street and called Debby and Tal to come down from the apartment and get me. And, tonight, I am packing again.

Tomorrow I am leaving for my own apartment, the one I will share with Hana from Poland and Kenneth from Norway and Eva from France from now until either February if I do go to Africa and May if I don't (which is starting to look like a very disappointing possibility...another post for another time, that subject). Tonight I will sleep here with my view of the bluffs of Jordan and my view of the Dead Sea, with my bags packed and ready to move once again in the morning.

I spent the first seventeen years of my life living in exactly the same house--the same bedroom for most of the time, even, interrupted only by the arrival of my brother Nathan and the need to move down the hall to make room for our new baby. Same address, same phone number, same quiet dead end suburban street. Since then I have moved countless times: Iowa, back to Illinois, Iowa again, southern California, the south Bay, Fell Street, Geary Boulevard, Judah Street and on from there from June until now. While hanging up the laundry today I realized that my blue-striped robe, flapping in the Jerusalem breeze, was purchased ten years ago when I was living in Rancho Cucamonga--ten! I stopped to think of all the places I've lived since, most of which I could not begin to even imagine at that time, and then of course I wondered where I will live as the next decade unfolds. I think it is fair to predict that I will be on the move. Maybe my semi-nomadic existence can be attributed to the fact that I was almost a gypsy girl--have you heard the story of my father being nearly kidnapped as a very young boy by a gypsy woman who tried to take him on a bus until my grandfather knocked her onto the sidewalk, grabbed my dad, and ran all the way home? No? Ah, it's a good one. Maybe once I settle in at my newest new house I'll tell you all about it.