I never enjoy goodbyes. I’m not sure anyone really does.
I’ve seen plenty of friends of mine leave Israel and it’s never easy to see them go, even when you knew they were leaving. There’s so much uncertainty. I’ve had friends leave and come back, and others that left and never came back (:::coughs::: Xander!…that’s right, I called you out on it too! Deal with it!).
Anyway, when I got off work today I went to meet a friend of mine who’s half-year+ course has ended. She’s flying back to the States in just a couple hours. We had her last meal in Israel at Max Brenner (I’ll sum it up by saying the entire menu is chocolate…aaaaand the ladies love it! Surprise, surprise).
My friend was leaving tonight, her friend driving her to the airport is leaving in a week….but one of the other girls there to say goodbye had just arrived and was thinking about becoming and Israeli citizen and never leaving….
I try to be as humble as I can, but I’m a survivor in this game.
Let’s sum things up this way:
When I came to Israel I didn’t know the word “Yes” in Hebrew…Three and a half years later, I’m a translator….
When I came to Israel I’d almost never done any blue-collar work…My first jobs? Fish butcher, gardener, and janitor…
When I came to Israel I thought the army was what jocks did when high school football ended…I finished as an infantry soldier; a sergeant…
I’ve been through two wars (didn’t fight in either one for those keeping score, but I’ve had my share of combat-experience), I’ve lived on a commune, in a small city, and in a big city and I’ve slept on couches in between, and I’ve fallen in love and been heartsick. A lot has changed in less than four years, and I don’t see much of a chance of things getting static anytime soon…anyone who knows me knows that if I’m bored, it won’t stay that way long…
I think it’s fair to say that every person I love or care about that I didn’t see *today*, I miss. In spite of all the hardships I’ve had in the past few years, missing people is by far the most difficult to deal with.
Felicia, have a great flight and come back soon….I’ll be waiting….I’ll miss you, but maybe it just goes with the territory…it is what it is….
Over the weekend I saw in the Israeli press that some Lufthansa flights from Frankfort to Tel Aviv had been canceled — and I thought of you, because that was your last route home, home to Tel Aviv. I think about some pretty unusual things since you’ve been there. Life is strange.
All the time you were growing up, from a tiny child, it was in my mind to get you ready to leave the nest. I never thought you’d fly so far away, but you did.
About a hundred times since the Second Lebanon War started (was that your second week in Israel?) I have been asked when is Andrew coming home. And every single time I said, he’s not coming home. When other people said tell him to come home, I said no. When you said you wanted to stay in Israel, I said go for it. When you said you wanted to serve your new country as a combat soldier, I could have stopped you, my only child, but I signed the papers and gave my permission. The Israeli name you chose for yourself is Avraham. God said to Avraham (he had a different name when he started out, too), leave your country and your people and your family and go to the land that I will show you, and he did. And so did you.
What we need is HaTikvah playing in the background. The Hope. I believe in you. Live your destiny.
Cheers! (as Aaron, another one who flew far from the nest, would say)