Welcome Home, Welcome Back

Showing my dad, in his office, pictures of jumping
from a plane.

My brother parked the car a few blocks from the school.  It was the end of the day and the neighborhood buzzed with life as parents picked up their children, school buses rumbled around the streets, and crossing guards made sure the little ones made it safely across the road.  My brother, dad and I walked across the parking lot and towards the front door of the school.  Suddenly, I heard a shout and saw my mother running towards me, arms in the air in preparation for a loving embrace, her face happily contorted in a mix of crying and smiling.  I stopped in my tracks and waited for her to reach me.  As we threw our arms around each other, she rocked slightly as she always does when holding one of her children after a long absence.  Her son had finally come home.

My journey home began nearly two days earlier.  I spent my last day in Tel Aviv running around to finish a few loose ends, had a nice lunch with my friend Big Mike after he just got back from the States, and packed my bag to prepare to leave.  Amy, her girls and I had dinner (David was in Europe on business) and around nine that evening, I got in a cab and sped off to Ben Gurion Airport.

I at once wanted the driver to speed up and slow down: speed up because I was excited to come home and slow down because I wanted to cherish each second I have on my time off.  I get in line at the airport to check my ticket and one of the security agents, who checks everyone's luggage, asked the standard questions: did you pack your bag yourself?  Where are you going?  Etc etc.  Did this all in Hebrew.  Point for me.  Oh you're in the army?  Yes, Tzanchanim.  Nice, so was I.  Another point for me?

Time from entering the airport to being in the terminal: thirty minutes.  Thank you Israeli airport security.  America, get your act together.

I slept on the flight to Newark, called my parents with my old American phone when I landed, then went on the second leg of my journey and landed in Chicago.  I had been in contact with my dad and brother about which baggage claim I was at for them to come pick me up.  When they pulled up in the family's minivan, I thought that someone else might be in the car.  But it couldn't be my mother, because she was at school.  I slide open the side door and there's my grandmother waiting for me!  Such a surprise.  (But, more importantly, Grandma, where's the kugel?)

We drove home, and it didn't really feel weird that I was back in Chicago, in December, thirty degrees outside, with my family.  Israel, the IDF, Shchem...everything seemed so far away.  Although I am simply on a break, my life over there seemed to have ended, been cut off, a clean break.  I was free.

Entering my house again for the first time was...I don't know any word to describe it.  It was a combination of at ease and comfortable, as well as it being eery and off-putting.  I walked into my room, forgetting many of the things that line my bookshelves, desk, cabinets, and being pleasantly surprised at being able to discover these things all over again.  I lingered at my books, recounted my Chicago Cubs bobble heads, and laid back on my bed.  Suddenly, I felt ill.  My head began to spin and my two worlds crashed together.  A wave of thoughts and memories from the army came over me, even as I tried to shut them out and focus on being home in my room.  I knew that my month here will be short.  I could see how I can become very comfortable in this easy lifestyle I will lead for the next four weeks.  And then having to return to the army and the difficult life there, it could be easily the most emotional dive I would ever experience.  For longer than a fleeting moment, I wanted to be back in Israel and forego the entire month.

My mom was supposed to come home from school at four.  I thought it would be nice to go surprise her there.  My grandmother had gone home, so the three of us got in the car and drove off.  It turned out that she also surprised me.  I didn't want to go back to Israel for an entire month.

The past two weeks has gone by fast, as was almost expected.  I had big plans to prepare for: a weeklong trip to Los Angeles and then Las Vegas.  I've picked out some new clothes and shoes for the trip over the holidays.  I had some doctors' appointments as well.  Picked up some contacts that are designed to be slept in, which will be better for the shetach (field) than my current contacts that I'm supposed to take out every night.

I've also kept myself busy spending time with old friends.  Most of them have jobs or are in graduate school in the city.  Three good friends from home all live together in a great apartment, have jobs, girlfriends....pretty much a life.  A college roommate now goes to UC Medical school.  Others may be at home in Chicago but have jobs and careers started.  Everyone is moving on with their lives.  It's a great and hard thing to see.  Makes me want to start getting on with my life as well.  But then they ask me about what I'm doing, how I'm doing, and they say it's great and incredible and all that jazz.  My optometrist even mentioned how he wished he had taken a year off after undergrad to see the world or do something different.  It's great and all, but in the midst of my friends' successes and lives, it's hard to not want to start my own.

And then going out at night in the city made me wish I could do that all the time.  We went to bars and clubs, talking to girls, hitting on them, dancing with them, drinking with them.  All of it much easier to do here in Chicago than in Israel with Israeli girls.  How I wish I could do this every weekend!  One Tuesday evening, my hometown friends, my brother and myself met at a bar on the DePaul college campus in the city for a night of trivia.  This sports bar was packed, at first we sat on couches for an hour before a table opened up.  But the pitchers flowed and the atmosphere was alive that it didn't matter where we sat or what was going on.  Halfway through the evening, my brother and I noticed that this bar on that night seemed to have the highest concentration of average to good-looking girls we had ever seen at one location.  Oh how I want to be there and not have to return to winter training in Israel!

That day, my mother, brother and I had met my dad at a downtown restaurant near his office.  He had invited some people he works with to lunch for my homecoming.  It was a classy meal, with bottles of wine, classy appetizers, interesting and accomplished people, and great Italian food.

I also have had the opportunity to meet with some of the rabbis who mentored me over the past couple years and whom I consider close friends.  I met with R. Zev Alter at his new home and we began a multi-hour discussion on whatever comes to mind.  I then went to JET's Monday evening learning and sat with R. Shalom Garfinkle to learn about Chanukah.  The Festival of Lights started a few days ago.  It's been the one holiday, Jewish or American, that I've been home for in more than a year.

I've been welcomed home and welcomed back.  For Jews, our true home is the Land of Israel.  Rabbis Zev and Shalom each gave me a very sincere and warm 'welcome back', but to say 'welcome home' would belie Israel as our true home.  America, Illinois, Chicago: here still feels like home to me.  Perhaps my soul is at peace and feels at home when I am in Israel.  But my house in Chicago still feels like home to me.  My parents live here ('here'! meaning I'm in the states!), my brother is around, my sister is only two time zones away in Los Angeles, and it is a place my friends always come back to for holidays.

Now, to prepare for a trip out west for me and my brother to visit our sister in Los Angeles, then Las Vegas for New Years!!!