I was faced with a quasi-existential dilemma. Should I locate my computer in all the chaos, set it up, close the door to what would be my office, and proceed to chronicle our misadventures in the new apartment, or should I direct my attention towards helping Barbara turn our new quarters into something livable? One thing I knew, I would not have the time and energy, let alone the mental acuity to do both at the same time. I chose the latter option, which I am convinced was the right way to go. Now that things have settled down a bit, I feel more inclined to return to where I left off in this sorry saga and continue.

Perspective, that’s the ticket. As they say, it can always get worse. OK, so you’ve moved into a construction zone. But lots of people in your part of the world are living in a destruction zone, where it won’t get better anytime soon – if ever. So you haven’t been having a reliable source of hot water. Children are standing on a line with buckets…. You get the message.

I remember as if it were yesterday a phone conversation I was having decades ago with a dear friend. At the time, Barbara was working on commission selling advertising space, and her income was sporadic – as opposed to mine, which was pitiful but dependable. There were, shall we say, seven good years followed by seven lean years, and we were in year ten of the cycle. Looking at our bank account, I was seriously concerned that we would not be able to pay our mortgage, and then what would we do and where we go with our cats? (This was pre-Natania.) At some point in the conversation, my friend reminded me that her husband was in fact dying, which seemed to her to be of greater concern. Fortunately for us, our finances improved, although Norman’s health never did.

The question remains: are we ‘entitled’ to our stress, or are we simply whiners and complainers, unable to distinguish our petty problems from real distress? It was answered for me in no uncertain terms by Jacob, the repair guy who was here for the second time to figure out why our water temperature never rose above tepid. He told me that if he were the guy with that problem, he would absolutely, positively be going nuts. Well, if it’s good enough for him and for other folks we know who can’t imagine life without a hot shower in the morning, I guess we’re also allowed to complain.

Therefore, I’ve decided to wear our stress as a badge of honor, as in we’ve earned it, like the creaks in our bodies and what’s happened to our hair.  We don’t need to be in mortal danger or be bereft of all human comfort to feel that what our world is out of control, and to react accordingly.

Let’s go back to that fateful Monday, when the crew from the moving company was packing everything in sight, and we had escaped to Aroma to get out of the way. We were aware that our buyers owed us one more payment, due several days before, which we hadn’t received. Then, Barbara got a frantic message, to the effect that we hadn’t gone to the Iriyah, and that was what was holding up the transaction. A phone call to our lawyer. It seems we needed to get a statement that we didn’t owe the city any money. And we needed something from our vaad habayit that we hadn’t been delinquent in paying our monthly assessment. Then, and only, then would the buyers’ bank release our money. (You might fairly ask, what business does the bank have to decide what to do with its customers’ money, but that’s another discussion.)

Wooooosh. That’s the sound of the air being sucked out of our psyches.  Hadn’t we done all this already, the paperwork, the contracts, the dealing with the banks, the bureaucratic falderol you have to go through here in The Land? Here we are with our belongings being stuffed into boxes, and all of a sudden, You forgot this, you forgot that. No Mr. Attorney, you’re the one who forgot. You never told us we needed to do these things. Now we have to go back to the same woman at the city office whom we had seen three weeks before to get a form we could have easily gotten then with a lot less aggravation. And we’d have to do this the next morning because now it’s too late in the day to deal with it. Barbara was able to get hold of our neighbors, who are the vaad habayit, so that Margalit could locate a piece of paper and scribble something on it that would satisfy those concerned.

Oh, and Barbara had learned that there would be no water from 9:30AM until whenever on Wed. on our new block, to welcome us into our new apartment. (That’s it, kick a guy when he’s down.)

At a certain time of life, some old geezers’ thoughts turn to the dreaded ‘D’ word (as in, ‘downsize’), and suddenly most of their possessions seem to be not so important: high school memorabilia, back issues of magazines, old encyclopedias, collections of greeting cards sent by family members, many of the things hoarded for decades suddenly are headed for the dumpster. Does anybody want this stuff?

I am not one of those suddenly possession-phobic geezers, still there I was at Sefer v’sefel with a bag full of books. These are ones I believe you can sell; they’re in good condition. Just take them. Which for the most part – because I’ve made judicious choices – they do. They even give me a few shekels store credit for the ones I got from them in the first place. The rest? Just find them a good home.

But with the two of us on the job, there was a lot less for the movers to deal with – which was a good thing, because they were going to charge us 45NIS for each carton that they would pack, plus the agreed-upon flat fee for moving everything from point A to point B – in our case, around the corner.  I had already done what I could to lighten the drain on our collective wallet, given the restraints of time, energy, and the number of boxes we’d been able to get our hands on. Let us at least pack the easy stuff: books, linens, and the like. Leave the rest to them.

Barbara’s efforts were of a similar vein, involving the local women’s swap group on WhatsApp. She had never before paid the slightest attention to their activity. We hadn’t been giving anything away, and we certainly weren’t looking to acquire any more stuff. We had more than enough knick-knacks and bric-a-brac to meet our needs, but somehow what we didn’t need or want was lusted after by others in our community. Do these ladies live on this group? That was Barbara’s question. She would post a picture of something, an unused teapot, assorted vases, the strange object we were given in India that  I had to dust every few weeks, cookbooks that I was never going to look at again, clothing, you name it. Wouldn’t you know it, within seconds – SECONDS – somebody was on it, Johnny (or better, Janie)-on-the-spot. I’ll be right over. Of course, it might take them several days to arrive. Sort of like, ani kvar b’derech, which implies that so-and-so is actually on the way, but usually means that the someone is considering heading your way but is first looking for a pair of shoes to put on.

We returned to our apartment from Aroma after our mid-day meal to watch the crew work at super-human speed. They had showed up the day before with their supplies, and now they were assembling boxes, stuffing everything that was within eyesight into them, sealing them, and going on to the next one. All there was for us was to stay out of the way and watch them work. By nightfall, they were done. There was still the furniture to deal with, but that was for the next day, when everything we owned would be put on the truck.

And then it was the ‘next day,’ and it was like a fire sale; everything had to go, and everything did go – onto the truck, around the corner, and up the stairs to our new apartment. (Everything except us and our three cats. Iris would take us by car; you don’t want to let Shekhi, Lucky, and Pooms loose in a truck full of boxes.)  

We would be vacating our beloved apartment, the one we had lived in so happily for fifteen years, had worked so hard to make more livable, had entertained so many friends, had gone through several sets of cats. We made one last inspection, going room by room, just to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. Even so, we managed to overlook a drawerful of Barbara’s shoes, which we recovered a week or so later.

Now the apartment was empty, ready for the new owners, who would be doing I dreaded to think who-knows-what. But that’s what happens when you leave; there’s always someone who knows better and will prove it by coming in with their crew of workers to do, undo, and redo. But that’s their prerogative; after all, they’ve paid the big bucks for the chance. We would be starting from scratch, an even more daunting task – as we soon discovered.