Why did “getting over it” have to take twelve years? At least it didn’t take forty!
There have been other signs of progress:
Months ago, I left my job and sold my house. Even though my plan to make aliyah was not working out, I entrusted myself to insecurity: it's a doorway, I hope, to a new life. I do not miss the house, only watching sunrise in the back yard, looking out at desert and mountains.
A few weeks ago, I visited Washington. Olympia seemed eager to press upon me many opportunities to build a full, new life. Those opportunities would have added up to a life I’ve already had. I want something else.
When I returned from Washington, I was overjoyed to be in the desert again. When did I become a lover of the desert?
I had thought that I missed abundant green and generous rains. In fact, I’ve learned to love bare earth, plants that thrive between rocks, bright flowers that appear for only a day, and clouds that are immense and fantastical landscapes in the sky.
I even love the tease of the monsoons: seeing a smear between cloud and horizon and knowing it’s raining “over there,” watching nearby rain evaporating before it reaches the ground, feeling three-minute long rolls of thunder, and waiting and hoping for rain to fall where I am.
Waiting and hoping. They feel good. And when the rain pours down: joy!
The knowledge that I have found my place is empowering. I am a toshevet midbar, a desert dweller. I will discover other parts of myself and, eventually, I will find my name.
There is no hurry. I want to take this journey.
Addendum: Tamara Cohn Eskanazi writes, "Wilderness is a place—or time—without orienting landmarks or structure." She asserts that the theme of B'Midbar (Numbers) is transition and that the book "charts the journey through a wilderness and attempts to create new structures in this intermediary space for future life in the land."
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