As You Like It: Returning

I looked at our carts brimming with thin, flat boxes and thought about how many times this store had solved our furniture problems. IKEA, I just found a store named IKEA and suddenly that name … you get the picture. I may make fun of it and claim that the name, roughly translated from the Swedish, means thousands-of-screws-and-pieces-of-wood-that-need-to-be-assembled, but the store always comes through for us. Lisa’s rooms are furnished with its wares, our bed gets constant raves, and even Mariel sleeps on an IKEA mattress. And now we were trolling its cavernous aisles once more for Mom. Because, you see, my mom is finally returning to the U.S. to live and we were busily putting her future home together.

I left for Israel in the fall of 1970 knowing that my parents would soon be joining me. Moving to Israel had always been our family’s dream. The original plan was for us all to go together once I had finished college, but lives change, plans change, different roads suddenly appear and so it was with us. After my first year of college I spent the summer in Israel on my own and fell hopelessly in love with the country, with someone I had met, and with heady, reckless freedom. So I went back to the States in August planning to return to Israel in the fall. 

By the summer of 1971 we were all together in Israel, though we had picked up another family member — my new husband, Mark. It would take us the better part of that year to finally feel that we were home. My parents bought an apartment in the northern town of Nahariya, while Mark and I lived in Haifa about a half hour away. Mom and Dad quickly found a wonderful group of friends and settled into their new life.

But we never had our happily-ever-after. War exploded in 1973 and Mark’s sudden death shocked us shortly after. Mom, Dad and I spent the year trying to recover. That summer we flew to the States for a holiday and some rest. It was then that Steve and I reconnected. Though I went back to Israel in September, Steve had asked me to marry him and so at the end of the year I returned to the States. Leaving Mom, Dad and Israel was one of the hardest things I had ever done. And I would have been sadder still had I known that it was also to be the beginning of a long separation from my parents — almost 40 years of being a long-distance family.

None of us ever got used to the separation, but that’s the way our lives remained for over 30 years. Then, when Dad died ten years ago, I began to hope that Mom would join us here. But Mom couldn’t imagine leaving her home. Still, I kept hoping that one morning she would wake up and change her mind. I would dream of all the everyday things that we would do, all the places that I would take her, all the holidays we would finally celebrate together.

Every summer when we were together I would ask her, “Mom, have you thought about moving back to the States? Are you ready? “

And each time the answer was the same, “No, I’m not ready.”

So I would wait and try not to push her because it wouldn’t be fair. I could never force her into anything that she didn’t want just to satisfy a selfish need of my own. But last year, for the first time, I pushed a little harder. And I could hear the anger in my voice when I asked her why she wouldn’t change her mind. And then suddenly she said the words I honestly thought I would never hear her say: “I’m ready.”

I caught my breath not believing that I had actually heard correctly, but as we talked she told me that she thought it was time for her to join us. She didn’t know that when I hung up the phone I cried. After so many years we would actually live a normal family life where we could see each other any time we felt like it. It seemed like a miracle.

So Steve and I have been spending the last few months getting everything ready for her. It’s been hectic but exciting. We’ve had luck that we couldn’t believe. I truly believe that my dad is overseeing everything we do. We were able to find her an apartment in a wonderful senior-living housing complex just 15 minutes away from us. Mom will have everything that she needs virtually at her doorstep.

The last major thing on our “mom” list was designing her apartment. We spent months poring through catalogues, visiting furniture stores, measuring and arranging, and finally realized that IKEA had just about everything we needed and it all fit together with style. So that’s how we found ourselves tracking down tables, chairs, bureaus, a bed and sofa and other assorted household stuff, praying that every piece we had chosen was on the shelves. The store computer claimed that it was all in the store, but until we actually loaded it on the cart I couldn’t relax.

Finally we stood there, mission accomplished, and headed for the registers and at least a month’s worth of furniture assembling. But it’s all worth it because Mom’s coming home.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on May 20 2010. Filed under As You Like It, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.