Watching and Waiting-The Moody Blues
Dear Into Israel Readers,
It is amazing how easily one can slip back into their previous life. Or so it seems on the surface.
I have lived in Austin four other times. This is my fifth time, and most likely final time. Each occasion represented a different moment in my life; this time is no exception.
Dining the evening before the day I left Israel on December 1st, I sat surrounded by friends at the cozy Karma restaurant in Ein Kerem. From there I had gone directly to Ben Gurion airport for my flight.
Before my departure, I was busying myself with all the necessary tasks to complete. I had not made any definite living arrangements in Texas; I was going with the flow. When I was younger I would get anxious not knowing the road up ahead, and wanted Life orderly, and now both calm and excitement exist within the intrigue of the potential knowledge.
It was a glowing, gentle descent into a sunset arrival of the distant Austin downtown and Hill Country skyline. Aaron, my first-born child, was waiting for me at the airport with a smile that said, Mom, I knew you would be back. We drove immediately non-stop, immediately that is after providing my contact information for my missing luggage, to Chuy’s to eat enchiladas. Jet-lagged, I kept saying ken, lo, & todah rabah to the attentive Hispanic waiter at Chuy’s. “Mom, he doesn’t know what ken and lo means,” Aaron responded. “Interesting,” I said, “He appears that he does.”
Noshing on chips and salsa, Aaron wanted to know where I was going to stay, and I told him I didn’t a clue. I would get a room somewhere to crash and sleep and call his grandparents and wait for my luggage. I texted my best friend at Bocachica, and told her that I had just arrived back in the States, and inquired if one of her two gorgeous guest apartments there were available, and by the time the check came she had texted back—yes, the maid was just here today, come right over, I’ve been emailing you, where you have been?
I had initially not intended to live back at my beloved Bocachica, but had set my sights on living in far south Austin to be closer to getting out of town towards San Antonio where my daughter, Lauren, and most of my immediate family resides. Yet within minutes after I arrived at Bocachica, with one candle lit for the first night of Chanukah and a glass of wine in-hand, my friend told me that my favorite apartment, one of her two guest apartments—the one I had always adored, mind-you, had just become available. She was giving it up and she had emailed me about it, but I had been in-flight, so I had no knowledge of it. The above image shows the apartment furnished at present, and my furniture arrives in a month. Of course, I took it, and will move in 1.1.11.
The Bocachica, circa early 1960’s, is a crescent shaped two-story complex of 25 apartments set on two and half tree-covered acres situated between two cliffs on an inlet from Lake Austin in a private town, Westlake Hills, just to the west of Austin. The winding and hilly two-lane road in and out of our compound can be quite treacherous, so the only safe way to come and go is by car or by canoe! Bocachica is unique, bucolic, and very Bohemian. Very.
Sleeping soundly through the night, I arose the next morning to buy a car. I had emailed my contact that had sold me my last vehicle, a royal blue Mercedes Kompressor. I had also sold it back to her before I left for Israel. This time I wrote her exactly what I was looking for, but I hadn’t heard back from her till hours before I left Israel. She had indeed found the vehicle in Dallas, and didn’t want to let it go while waiting for a response from me, so she had already had it shipped to Austin. It was waiting for me, washed, buffed to an inch of its young life, and with a full tank of gas.
Aaron drove me over to test-drive it, and sign the paperwork. In 24 hours I had leased my favorite apartment, and purchased a beautiful steel blue Benz sedan.
Sensing that all this accomplishment was a little too easy and surreal given hours before I was in my apartment on Jabotinsky walking the streets up to the Shuk, and riding the bus across the Land of Israel, I was waiting. Waiting for that moment of truth to surface, waiting for the reality to hit of the Love I had left. It wasn’t a long wait.
I called my father to tell him about the apartment and the car, and all he was talking about was “The Fire.” I kept saying, “Dad, Dad, please slow down and back-up, I don’t know what you are talking about, what fire?” “Barbara, haven’t you heard, Israel is on fire and many people have died,” my father passionately replied.
Within a few hours of my departure, the devastating fire in Israel would begin. I could not bring myself to turn on the HDTV hanging in my gorgeous guest apartment to watch the news.
My Heart hurt. I sat transfixed out the picture window at my treed environment far from the raging inferno, and reflected back on my day trip to the north with a blazing clarity. I remembered in-depth as if was indeed that very day when I got off the bus in Karmiel, and the pretty real-estate agent who was pregnant with her first child picked me up and drove me around to look at properties. We had talked and laughed like we were friends that had been re-united after a long absence. I remember how she had called me weeks after my trip to tell me about other properties, and to introduce me to Americans that were living there. It wasn’t about making a sale; it was about Belonging. I could hear it in her voice.
I have signed up for the Texas Real Estate course, and I start my first class tomorrow. If I do finish the course, and become an estate agent, I hope my business will be about that, and that my voice will not be focused on the commission but about being a guide for a client’s belonging.
I was always meant to live in Israel, and I was meant to return to Texas. What the future, what the road up-ahead holds, I don’t know. That, dear Into Israel readers, is The Intrigue. Stay-tuned.
Shalom,
Barbara
