Tamarika: Home is where my blog is

Quotes of the Day:

... dancing on our keypads, singing silently to strangers. David Gottlieb

We challenge one another to be funnier and smarter...it's the way friends make love to one another. Annie Gottlieb

In a way I was forced into this sabbatical. Timing of events, life companion's new job. I was spirited away to another city, a different state. I wander around our new home with Molly and Ada. We look like prisoners and although we are comfortable and curious about the new smells, corners of the rooms and mice that hide in our closets, we all just want to go home.

"Where is home, Mom?" Gilad asked yesterday as he called to tell me about his interview. "What is home?"

Remember Gilad? Some of you might remember the posting where I worried about him having a fever even while I ate stroopwafelen that I had purchased from the Chestnut Hill Cheese Shop. I worried so much, because I was well while he was ill, that I made a donation to Save the Children for the Tsunami victims. (One of my therapists many years ago named that type of worry, the big "G." )Remember that? That was one of the postings I lost before the technical hitch.

Ah, stroopwafelen. I met them in the little town of Raalte in Holland. Back in 1982. That was home for six weeks once. I had plans. I was going to teach yoga and change my life. Then it turned into a big drama and back to Israel I flew, where I waited six years to really break the ties and change my life. This time in America. Was that home? Ramat Hasharon? Buffalo? And what about Africa? Was that home? Gilad was born in Manchester in our little apartment above the laundrette for a year in 1973. That was home for awhile.

Good question, Gilad.

How long will I feel that this sabbatical is forced? I left "Bob" back in Buffalo. He suggested I use this time to find out what I really want to do with my life. So many of my decisions in the past have been based on what I thought others would like me to do or even, what was the "right thing." I wanted to sing, act, or become a political journalist. Instead I became a teacher. There are many other examples, which I am uncomfortable to share at this point.

So here is the opportunity. Here and now. I cloud the process with "feeling like a prisoner," "wanting to go home," and feeling powerless. Forced sabbatical. At times I think the blog helps to distract me from finding out what I want to do with my life.

And yet, today, this blog has helped me figure something out.

I choose this sabbatical. I choose this commitment to my blog. It is helping me formulate what it is I want to do with my life. Here and now. And with you, gentle reader, out there, I am able to think, reflect, describe and share the process.