Katamon through the eyes of a 15 year old, and getting ready to move on

For the four years I was in high school, my brother was in college. About twice a year I would spend shabbat with him at Brandeis and have a blast hanging out with the "big kids." All his friends got to know me pretty well. I was (and still am) simply the coolest little sister ever.

Last week I got to host Tess. Tess, who is now 15, is the first kid I ever babysat for. I've known her and her brother for fourteen years. Even before I officially babysat for the kids I would go over all the time on shabbat afternoons. So when Tess asked if she could stay with me before going to camp up North, I was pretty excited. As the youngest in my family, I never got to play big sister the way my siblings did at college. The difference? When I visited Brandeis I was hanging out with people five years older than me, at a familiar place, and only twenty minutes from my house. Tess survived a shabbat full of meals and parties with people fifteen years older. To put that in other mathematical terms, they're twice her age. Add on top of that being 6,000 miles away from home, in a totally unfamiliar place, and in an environment she knew nothing of... I would say she was pretty brave (not knowing that she would need to be).

Now, Tess is a pretty smart kid. Of course this isn't surprising because I taught her most of what she knows. I gave her as much background info about this place as I could: most people are twice your age, some are creepy and some aren't, etc. It was funny hearing her reactions, how she picked up on certain situations between various couples and groups of people, and how she perceived the overall madness of a bunch of 25-35 year old single people thrown together in the phenomenon that is the Jerusalem social scene. It was humorous and only slightly disturbing when she talked about dilemmas interacting with boys her age and I informed her that fifteen years from now nothing will have changed. My favorite moments were when I encouraged her to stop by the "housecooling" party on Mendele (sometimes you need to take advantage of opportunities to see things) and prefaced it with "Remember those times I let you stay up late as long as you promised not to tell your parents? Well this is like one of those times, except this time you really can't say anything." The other favorite moment was when she said the funniest thing ever. "It's not, like, that these guys are so old, it's like... they should just be married already." Oh Tess, how much they would all agree with you. Anyway, I would say besides her getting lost twice within the first ten minutes of me letting her out of my sight and almost winding up in the gay pride parade, I was an excellent hostess and a paragon of virtue in every way.

And now back to the real world. Classes are over. My Hebrew final is over. I went to an interesting conference about trauma and early childhood. I only got bored in the middle of one session and retired to the napping room (it's so nice and empty these days). I have two more finals and five papers to get started on, but can't even imagine starting on any of that until I get over the next big hurdle in my life: moving. I have the keys to my new apartment. My landlord was ridiculously obsessive about having it painted and cleaned perfectly for us. Ilene, my new roommate, arrives on aliyah on Tuesday. I have some stuff moved in and my movers are coming Monday. I was on hold three times with the electric company before successfully switching the account into my name. I spent over an hour waiting at the municipality to put the apartment in our names, and tomorrow I take on the water company. My room is full of incredibly heavy boxes (movers here are like superheros- I don't know how they do it) and tomorrow I'm going to check out a fridge. Lisa is running around the apartment getting her stuff ready for movers coming tomorrow morning. And Harriet just plopped down next to me and started cleaning herself. Some things haven't changed... yet.

Last night Elie and Yoel (and Clive) came for dinner, as usual. This morning we davenned, also as usual, at the 8:45 Chovevei minyan and stuck around for kiddush. Alissa and I decided that next week we'll brave Ramban together. We even shook on it. Probably in two weeks we'll be back at Chovevei. It's not THAT much farther. Two weeks ago we celebrated Yoel and Alissa's engagement with an oneg (I'm not sure we could have moved out of this apartment before that happened) and last week we had one last hurrah with a seudat shlishit. And somehow out of our 20 or so guests only 3 or 4 were female. Yeah, that's our friends for you.

I don't feel a need to get all nostalgic and list all the things I loved about living here and with these roommates, and list everything I'm going to miss. Besides Harriet the Spy. I will miss the cute little par-par. Even though she's still sitting next to me cleaning her butt. As I said in the last post, it's amazing at how where you wind up living effects so much else. I felt the same way after graduating from UMD. I went there on a whim (okay, not quite a whim, but lets not get into that) and I can't imagine my life now without those friends and experiences. We decided to live in this apartment because it was the best deal with found. We had no idea who was living around the corner from here. Ted's kiddushs were something of a legend to everyone else but us. Elie and Yoel became our regular guests, and now my roommate is engaged to Yoel. I'm only moving a mile or so away. A 35 minute walk, tops. But this was my first home in Israel, and this is where I built my life here.

Now it's time for the next chapter, as we're calling it. New apartment, new roommate, new adventures, no cat. And I'm excited. I hate change. I handle change really, really badly. But it's going to be good. And in three weeks I'm going to the US for a month so my real start in the new place will be after being in the US and not straight from living here. And to my roommates- once a roommate, always a roommate. You join the ranks of some of the coolest people ever. Lisa- we met on August 20, 2002, spent 4 years planning our aliyah, and 5 years after that date made aliyah together. I think that's pretty neat. Then we found Alissa, and together the three of us braved the Jerusalem social scene for two years. We spent hours pondering the social dynamics and other mysteries of this place, and probably came up with nothing useful and conclusive. Except for getting Alissa engaged. Now I'll live with someone new to the scene and when she brings these issues up I can be like "oh that, we went through that last December, and sorry to say the situation is totally hopeless." How fun will that be?

That Par-Par is still next to me, and is now asleep. Furry ball of love. And I think that's the perfect way to end this blog entry.