Just as the school year is ending, the Spanish broom begins blooming in Jerusalem. All the rest of the year, it looks like a giant pine tassel, but now that it’s summertime, its scrawny branches push out fragrant yellow blossoms all over the place.
Probably everybody has a visceral reaction to specific sights and sounds and smells. The smell of a new book makes me eager to read what’s inside. The smell of rain makes me joyful. The sound of the Sabbath horn that occasionally drifts my way from deeper in Jerusalem makes me prick up my ears in anticipation of the week’s end. I tend to hate the sound of airplane engines (or pictures of airports) because it makes me think of leaving home. And when I’m in Jerusalem, seeing Spanish broom makes me sad because it reminds me: it’s almost time to go home.
Maybe I’m sounding impossibly mixed up: sad about leaving home; sad about going home. But isn’t life like that? Joy and sorrow get pretty jumbled together sometimes. In my case, I’ve lived in two worlds, and I love them both. The only problem is the leaving.
Getting to the airport from Jerusalem generally means leaving the house at about midnight. There’s the sound of rolling suitcase wheels on pavement, and then a silent few minutes on the curb, waiting for the airport shuttle to arrive.
It’s just a breath of a pause between the flurry of packing and goodbyes, and the long, crowded hours in airports and airplanes. But it’s enough of a pause to remember that goodbye will give way to hello, and this end will become the beginning of something else.
A funny thing happens when you spend so much time in another country: home becomes the exotic place. The place where your sense of wonder is alive to every detail. Tall forests? Green grass? Friends outnumbering strangers? Amazing! Stores seem impossibly large and shiny; houses seem impossibly quaint. The very quality of the air I breathe and the way sunlight falls on my head is different here at home.
Between the flurry of readjusting to life in the US, catching up with friends, and figuring out the life of a freelance writer, writing “Certain Change” provided just a breath of a pause to stop and remember. Change isn’t easy, but it’s never without purpose.
Elisabeth Adams 