Place

My biggest issue was this piece that I replaced with the one called - Home- and still not sure about any of them.

My Arad home

From the street it looks at it always did, boring, just a square building with a flat roof.  It sits below the street level separated only by a low stone fence. Once there were tall hibiscus bushes along the fence, burning in the summer with bright red flowers, shading the grass on one side and giving the small yard a feel of privacy. They are gone now. Curved granite walkway connects the parking to the house and the red brick deck.  A small entrance way leads to the front door. I turn to look at the yard. It looks much smaller than I remember. Only few steps from the deck to the stone wall and in between a tall Rosewood, and a broken lawn swing.

 I remember when we planted the tree. We just moved in and the girls were very young. We got it in the town nursery and it fit in the trunk of our car, looking more like a big bare branch then a tree. We planted it in the corner of the yard hoping for it to grow one day and shade the whole yard which it did. We did not realize then that it was growing under the power lines. And so every year now, the tree needs to be trimmed, never allowed to achieve its full size. Almost like us when we lived here, I repress a fleeting thought.

The deck I recall was built by Chuck few years after we moved in. It replaced a much smaller granite one, much like the walkway. I wanted a big deck that will be shaded by a wooden pergola. The deck was supposed to change the boring square look of the front and give us a place to sit, with our friends, on the cool summer nights. The pergola never materialized it was too expensive. But the deck stretches from one side of the house to the other. I spent almost every summer evening sitting there, enjoying the relief from the hot days.

Before I turn to go in I look at the other corner of the yard where the palm tree used to be.  For years, where ever we lived, we always planted a palm tree but never stayed long enough to see it growing. This one was the one we hoped will grow and become a mature tall tree but it didn’t. I can’t remember the exact circumstances of its death. It happened after we left and other people were occupying the house.

I open the front door slowly; it’s a different door now, replaced few years ago by the current tenants. For a moment it seems like nothing had changed. As if the time stood still and this is still the same house we bought more than twenty years ago just before Keren was born.  We moved in in the winter and felt for the first time, since we came to the town, that we truly belong. But the moment is gone and I can see the unfamiliar furniture, the different color of the walls, the curtains on the big windows overlooking the desert.

A year before we left we decided to change the windows. It might have been an attempt to hold on to what we knew was no longer there. It was an unsuccessful effort on my side to prove that leaving is not the only way to create a change. Like everything else we do, we spent days discussing the right windows, the colors and who is going to install them. We finally went with big bay windows that we painted ourselves and Chuck added the recessed lighting. They are still beautiful. From where I stand, at the entrance, I can see the open wide space of rolling hills and the Dead Sea, just a hint of blue in the distance.  I remember how the rays of the rising sun find their way in, no matter what time of the year it is.

 Walking down the stairs leading to the bottom floor I can see all the bedrooms in one glimpse. Originally there were three bedrooms, the third one leading to the back yard. We added the fourth bedroom years later by converting the bomb shelter, into a room for Keren. We put a lot of effort into it but she very rarely slept there. Now it is a storage room. We stored all our personal belongings there when we rented the house. Every now and then, Keren, even now, will stop what she is doing, look at me and say. “Do you remember...”And then “That doll I liked so much is she still there?”

I do remember. I remember a house full of life. I remember the girls and their friends and in the midst always few cats and at least one dog;  the ringing of phone calls, knocks on the front door, kids coming in and out and the unavoidable trivial fights. I remember when we moved our bedroom upstairs and left the bottom floor entirely to them.  I used to lie awake for hours trying to hear them breath, and later trying to hear the door opens when they came in late at night. I remember going down in the mornings and finding kids that were not there when we went to bed.  “Oh, it is so and so who came through the window in the middle of the night,” would be the answer to my inquiry.

I remember living in a small town where you know everybody and everyone recognizes you. Where you are never really alone. People nod and wave when they pass by your house and see you sitting on the deck. People stop and ask you questions when you walk down the street; in the store, the clinic even the swimming pool, you know that you are always seen.  We used to like it at the beginning. But as the years went on, what we used to perceive as closeness and warmth became meddling; seeing the same people and hearing the same talk became tedious. We became restless and then we left.

I go slowly, up the curving stairs and a minute before I step out I find myself glancing back and listening, holding my breath and waiting, everything is so still so I shut the door gently and walk away.