Week 10 prompts :49. Doesn't matter where you begin, you'll end up back here.

Returning after all that time felt like traveling back in time. On the surface there were no visible changes but everything and everybody looked worn-out, disillusioned and somewhat desperate. The only thing still unchanged was the desert with its breath taking views. A meeting over lunch with my former employer, talking about new money generating ideas for her nonprofit organization and later an afternoon coffee with my old friend Rachel. All very pleasant, comfortable and so familiar, known scripts and words I heard so many times before.  After only twenty four hours I am convinced more than ever before, I am not ready to come back. Arad is a closed chapter.

In the newly built Tel-Aviv airport, everything looks bigger, showy, with chrome and glass everywhere. Three weeks have gone by so fast.  I watch the huge water fountain in the center of the departure hall, rising and falling, while reading the colorful signs around. Most of them variations on the same theme” there is no place like home,” It is so easy, to slip back into the known and familiar. Almost like sliding your feet into old worn house slippers, comfortable but not very exciting. Maybe it is time to stop, breathe, look around and choose a different path.

Sitting on a rock, my legs in the water I’m tossing small pebbles across the shallow tide pools. Each one creates, as it lands, a series of small waves, circles within circles. Pronounced at the center they become gradually less distinct until they fade. The rhythmic movement is calming; bend and pick up a stone, toss it in the air, the soft splash as it is touching the water surface, creating concentric waves. The sun so warm on my back, the water licking my feet leaving wet marks, the ocean face rise and fall and as the tide moves in, I need to retreat towards the shore. 

I remember when He looked at me and said. “You can only know who you are if you know where you came from,” I wondered then if he realized that we came from the same small neighborhood, in Jerusalem. Actually from the same four stories apartment building. I was not sure, though, if he knew that our apartments shared a common wall, my bedroom wall, and yet we had nothing in common.

So sitting with my legs in the water marveling at the tide, I ponder, is it really about a place, about where you came from, where you begin, or taking yourself with you to wherever you go.