Missles and Jackals

Just over two years ago, a year before the war with Hezbullah, I went on a camping trip. Yuval and I and another couple went. We drove up to the green northern border, stopped at a roadside restaurant and filled up on hummus, salads, meat, and lemonade and then hiked through streams to a crumbling Crusader castle. After the hike, we started driving to find our camping spot. The border with Lebanon had been quiet since Israel's withdrawal a few years previous, so we were surprised to find our way blocked by an army truck. The soldier signaled us to stop. We did so, and rolled down our windows.
"Hezbullah has been firing over the fence," he said.
"Can we drive through," we asked, "or should we turn around."
"You can go," he said. "Just no bathroom breaks on the side of the road."
Everyone laughed as I thought, "we are all going to die."
We drove along the road that passed right next to the fence that demarcates the border. After a few minutes we turned off a little towards the camping spot. Another army truck blocked the road.
"Can we go down here?" we asked.
The soldier shrugged as his commander walked over.
"Is it safe to stay the night here?" we asked the commander.
The commander shrugged too, "Is anywhere safe?" he asked.
We drove a minute further into the campground. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" I asked the males. "Can you show me where we are on the map?" They pulled out the map and showed me the half a pinkie nail distance between us and the border with Lebanon. I called a council with the other woman, we decided the men were insane and we got back into the car and kept driving.
When we were about an entire pinkie nail away from the border, and it was starting to get dark we found an empty camp site in the middle of nowhere. We set up camp, lit a fire, drank wine, roasted marshmallows, and listened to the jackals howl in the night time around us, until we said goodnight to the hyraxes and crawled sleepily into our tents.
The next morning when we woke and started wandering around in the daylight we found we were camping on the outskirts of a preserved town from about the first century. We climbed up and down ruined walls, sat on wine press wheels, and lost ourselves in the maze of streets. There were no signs, no ropes keeping us out of any area. By Israel's standards, it was apparently not a very important first century village, so no one had really bothered to do much besides dig it up. After we had wandered our way down the last stone street, we got back in the car and drove back to the humid heat of a late Tel Aviv spring.

Why am I thinking of this story while in Utah, in the beginning of fall? Because I am not feeling very brave today. I needed to remind myself that I survived Hezbullah and wild jackals. I can survive whatever's next.

Old Friends, Sitting like Bookends

It's been a crazy two weeks, completely unconducive to writing for pleasure. Things have started to settle down the last few days and my brain is starting to clear- the insomnia induced fog is fading and my to-do lists are consolidating. The move into the new apartment was far more trying than I expected. Those around me don't seem much surprised by that, but I was hit out of the blue. For months I have looked forward to having my own space and my own home again. I didn't expect the air of finality that would accompany this move. Moving into my own place means that I am truly single and living with my sister in Utah, at the age of 28.

Obviously, I knew this before the day we went to pick up the moving truck. I guess that is why I was surprised to find myself crying as I packed up my books to move them from my mom's house to my new place. Books to me are like friends: there are some that are clearly associated with specific times and phases, and others that have stayed with me and become a part of me and my character and I find myself reassured just by being near them.

Several of my books are associated in some way with Yuval. They are gifts he gave me, authors he introduced to me, or the first books I owned in Hebrew. I found to my surprise, not only that I was crying, but that I was crying as though for someone who was dead, and had been dead for a while. My Yuval is dead, because I was in love with him in the past and in love with who I was certain he would become and in love with the life that we were going to build together. That Yuval, with that future intertwined with mine, doesn't exist, nor does the potential for that future together. It was actually nice to cry without longing. I have spent so much time the last year longing for things to be different- for me to be different, for him to be different, for our circumstances to change, for time to speed itself up and rush me into the future where the pain is already lessened.

After a week of turmoil, moving, working, setting up house, buying furniture, changing light bulbs, etc. I found a lovely bookshelf and prepared myself for unpacking my books. This time, the sadness didn't come. Instead, I found myself laughing over the homemade book my friend Larkin made me in Sweden, "Chicken Soup for the Swedish Soul: For those two bunny and a moose days". Two bunny and a moose days were the days that were so gloomy that a single stuffed animal just didn't cut it. They were the homesick days, the break up days, the sick-of-a-foreign place days when Larkin and I would cry until we had to laugh at ourselves, and each other, and life. Whenever we got to that point we would create toilet paper banners and wave them and dab our eyes with all the melodrama we could muster and declare that we were "going to write a letter about this!"

I found the children's books that my friend Kim has given me over the years. Each one has a dedication to me in her beautiful handwriting encouraging me on my journey, to continue bravely in whatever new direction I had been heading at the time. It's the idea of a continuation that is so powerfully reassuring to me. I had been mourning "starting all over". But we are all still here, my books, my friends, and me.

Things I Love about Utah

I have had the lovely experience lately of going about my daily business and experiencing little waves of pleasure washing over me, and finding myself thinking, "I am glad I am in Utah." This is not something that I ever expected to find myself thinking and so I find it even sweeter for its strangeness.

Here are some of the things I love:

The view of the mountains as I drive toward my condo. I have never lived in this part of the city before and the mountains are enormous seen from this perspective. Their golden brown sides, burned by the July sun seem to reach forever, and the clouds seem to billow like smoke around them.

The Wasatch beer company. Not only do they make decent beer, they make me smile. Their ads poke fun at the dominant culture in a way that is subversive, and yet somehow friendly. (At least I hope so. I don't think I know anyone who is religious and actually offended.) Their ad for Polygamy Porter: "Polygamy Porter- Take some how to the wives." There is also the 1st Ammendment Lager, with a label that sports a quote by Benjamin Franklin: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Xeriscaping. Finally, people here seem to be catching on to the fact that we are in a desert and water is a valuable, scarce resource. More and more people are choosing landscaping options that minimize the need for water and that take advantage of desert plants and native plant species. I love seeing these yards "sprouting" up all around the city.

The Avenues. My work is well located in the older part of the city and is surrounded by beautiful Victorian houses that for the most part are well cared for and brightly painted and I always know which street to turn on to get to my office because the house on the corner has a 10 x 10 foot poster of Elvis singing. They must have waterproofed it because it's survived a week of afternoon summer showers.

In some ways, it's good to be here. (Ironically, I originally wrote 'home' in place of the word, here, and I was so uncomfortable I had to change it. Now that's telling.)