‘Six months from now you’ll be laughing at all the problems you’ve been having.’ Maybe yes, but most likely no. I’m thinking about a friend of ours who is recovering from major surgery. She might very well feel satisfied with the results and be glad she went through the trauma, but I can’t imagine her and her family feeling giddy about the operation come Pesach time – as in, ‘That was fun; let’s do it again sometime.’ I’ll never look back with nostalgia at what transpired as we relocated from Our Home to THE apartment – even with the benefits that ensued – and yes, there are some, although, as you are correctly surmising, it wasn’t easy.

Had I been in a more ‘philosophical’ frame of mind, I could have said, Well, at least I have a bed to sleep in; not only that, it’s my own bed. When we moved into our house in Teaneck in 2000, we slept on the floor for several days because Barbara had thrown out our old beds before our new ones arrived. Something similar happened in our first apartment here in The Land because the store in Talpiot took its own sweet time constructing bed frames for us. (We had left our old beds behind when we made aliyah rather than take up precious space in our lift.) But I was not in that sanguine frame of mind, ready to contemplate the larger picture and the possibility of a brighter tomorrow. It was the first night we were in our new apartment, and both of us were wide awake at 3 in the morning. What better time to voice my complaints to my better half, who was a captive audience for my cries of anguish?

I began by pointing out some of the obvious deficiencies of our new quarters, as in no heat and no hot water – amenities we used to take for granted all those years in our old apartment. The heating/ac unit was still under construction and would be for a while. The only potable water was from the bathtub in the guest bathroom and the shower in the ensuite. The sinks and the faucets would arrive in due time, but we would need to figure out why the water that we could retrieve with a little effort was either cold or colder.

If I felt less than enthused by the experience, Pooms seemed even more distressed. I figured – correctly – that ‘the guys,’ Shekhi and Lucky, would be spooked out by the move but would soon consider our new digs as territory to explore. There was, for example, our sofa, sitting upright in a corner. The two of them could claw their way to the top and look down from the ceiling at us mortals down below – the ones who would take care of them – and gradually adjust to their new environment. But there was our aged feline sitting on our bed, totally freaked by the experience, howling her head off. I just hope she’s not waking up the dead, let alone our neighbors.

Barbara could not disagree with my fact-based assessment of our situation. Deep down, I knew she was sharing some of my sense of foreboding. But one thing I did not want to do was make things worse. I told my bedmate (my wife, not our cat) that I would say my piece once, and only once. Repeating ‘I told you so’ ad nauseum does not improve matters not one iota — as in, nobody likes an I-told-you-so. We had enough cold water without my throwing any of it on our marriage.

There I was, staring at the ceiling I could not see in the darkness, having a panic attack, thinking about the morning that would soon come. The moving guys had dumped everything willy-nilly into our salon – tables, chairs, 100 or so boxes of stuff, all randomly arranged and scattered about. How would we begin to make heads or tails of this hodgepodge? Where would we even start? I felt as helpless as the proverbial new-born baby – one with A.D.D.

(Imagine a better world, in which the crew of movers would arrive and carefully label every box, not just ‘living room’ or ‘kitchen.’ Instead, on the box and in a spreadsheet, it would say box #1 ‘dairy silverware,’ so that upon arrival, we’d know what’s in each box and where the contents are meant to go. That’s supposing the kitchen cabinets you plan to use have arrived or that you can locate the appropriate piece of furniture that’s stuck behind four other pieces of furniture.)

You might think that our situation couldn’t seem any worse, or at least that we couldn’t feel any more forlorn. And you would be right in that regard. We had indeed reached rock bottom emotionally, even though I failed to realize it at the time.  But there was a teensy-weensy glimmer of hope to be glimpsed if one paid strict attention. I was pleasantly surprised the next morning when I opened our front door, and there were all our daily newspapers, neatly wrapped, right where they were supposed to be, waiting for me to collect them! Weeks before, I had advised the folks who answer the phones at both The NY Times-Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post of our impending change of address, but would that translate into their notifying the delivery guy and his taking the proper action at the appropriate time – even figuring out where we had gone to? I was gearing up for the phone call to the same folks at Customer Service to complain that their print editions were nowhere to be found and then trudging back around the corner to see if the papers had been left where we used to live. (After all, old habits die hard.) For once, something had gone right. Now if I could only find a chair, I could sit down and peruse the print versions of the day’s news and views – even if I couldn’t do it over a bowl of granola and a cup of tea. As I said, a glimmer of hope.

Whereupon, help did arrive in the person of Brian, our handyman. Either he had some form of ruach hakodesh or Barbara had spoken to him, but either way, there he was. With a little effort, he was able to locate all the boxes labeled ‘mitbach’ (kitchen) scattered about and place them together against one wall and move everything else to another spot. That was the first step in creating order out of chaos, which would have taken me days or weeks to replicate – assuming my back and my spirits didn’t falter under the burden.

I began to consider: Could I somehow speed up the unpacking process by taking matters into our own hands? Our first effort, moving our breakfast table to where it would ultimately sit, didn’t pan out as planned. That space was exactly where Gilad, our painter/geves (sheetrock) guy, needed to work. So back the table went, out of the way, useless. The only other idea I had was to locate our coffee table and our living room chairs and clear a space for them smack dab in the middle of our new salon, where nobody would be working. And that’s where we had our meals – mostly take-out (or as they say here, ‘take-away’) – for the next several weeks.

The room was crowded enough, but it would get worse before it got better. First, our new dishwasher arrived. We had no kitchen to speak of, certainly no running water to attach it to, nor the use of actual dishes that would need washing. So it sat there in its carton, right in the way for several weeks. We could place miscellaneous objects – tissues, box cutters, newspapers on top, but you will agree with me that there are better uses for a brand-new kitchen appliance. Joining it in the just-in-the-way category was the carton with the fancy-shmancy hood that would go above our stovetop – once that was in place and the gas turned on.

You see where this is going – or not going. There is a difference between le-at, le-at (slowly, slowly), as in, one day at a time, you’ll get there, be patient, the words of encouragement bandied about in these parts, and we’re at a standstill, nothing’s moving. If you ever want to practice your savlanut (patience), something honored here more in the breach, I know a good way to do it – although I don’t recommend it. It was as if we were stuck in a domestic traffic jam, unable to do anything until Gilad (who was at least making an effort), the a/c guy, the cabinet maker, and all the kablan’s people tasked with fixing what was wrong completed their missions. One gets tired of a steady diet of take-out (or take-away), but at least we weren’t going hungry. Frustrated yes, famished no.