Three Weeks Ago

This has been in the works for a long time:

 

Before there even was an "us," we talked about aliyah.  It was nearly the first real conversation that we ever had, sitting in a dorm room in Oberlin, Ohio, on a late summer day in August 1995.  

 So much has changed since then, but that conversation has been a thread through it all.  Sometimes fainter than others, and nearly fading into the background at times. But like so much else, we can thank the boys for brightening the color to a luminous shine.  

It was a simple question really, asked over two years ago the morning after our return from our niece's Bat Mitzvah.  

"So when are we moving?"

 I don't remember who asked it first, but by the end of the day, they had both said it, and from then on, it was only a matter of time.

But there is an answer to that question now.  July 11, 2012.

Yesterday was the boxing.  It was very humbling to see much of what we own placed into boxes in less than six hours and stacked around the house in little islands.  Today, everything else gets wrapped in paper, plastic, and tape and it all is being fit, most of the pieces of our material life, into a 20-foot shipping container.