We have a Google Earth™ Program that lets us see where we used to live in the States. I can, when I feel nostalgic, look at the buildings where I went to school as a boy and young man, look for “Z” Cozy Corner on Avenue Z and Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, or the two-story house we lived in, in St. Paul. My wife can look at her childhood home near the railroad tracks in St. Paul or the schools she attended, carrying book bags and a tennis racket. She can show the kids where the Ben Franklin was that she would shop at as a teenager, or where she would go to buy her mother packs of cigarettes when she was a little girl. The boys can look at the alleyway they used to walk up coming home from school, the school they went to, and the highway they used to cross going to the day care lady after their first day care lady died from cancer.
Sometimes, I get positively homesick for the many places I called home in the United States. When I count the few shekels I have in my pocket or the fact that we have to vacate the apartment we are living in less than two weeks after Passover ends, when I look at the piled up bills and the little money we have, it can really get to me. In St. Paul, we never worried about money, eating out, or anything. We didn’t live lavishly, but we were able to live comfortably. I budgeted money well enough that we never worried about it or how to pay for any bills we ran up. We had a car, an A1 credit rating, and got at least four credit card offers a week. Except for the interest we paid on the mortgage, we never paid a dime in interest payments.
That’s all gone now – the money, the car, and the credit rating. We sold the house and live here on a few thousand shekels a month and a lot of faith. Looking back should make me want to run back to the States to live. But in doing that, we’d lose all that we’ve gained here.
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