Around 7:30 AM, I walked out to the bus stop and took a bus to the center of town. I hadn’t slept. I needed eggplants and garlic. I went grocery shopping, to the post office, to the bank, and finished all that up by around 9:30. I consulted the map on my phone. No bus was coming for over a half hour. I was only about a mile away from home! I could walk it! It’s a beautiful day!!
Okay. If you know me well, you understand how my mind is like an ever-shifting Hogwarts Castle of navigation, where places are one location and, moments later, appear on the other side of the street, or the other side of town. Think dyslexia but for visual/spacial. I am the worst person ever to ask for directions. I’m 100% sincere in recommending you ask a stray cat on the side of the road before asking me, because at least the cat wouldn’t give you wrong directions (though it might hiss at you and I usually would not).
Katzrin is a beautiful town. I love it. But all the streets in my neighborhood…look…exactly the same. This doesn’t help my navigationally-challenged mind. Also, my own street is shaped like a horseshoe, so there are TWO Tzipori streets and I often guess the wrong one when walking home. After five months living here, I still don’t have a freaking clue which street is mine on sight. I feel no shame in this; it’s simply the way life is. I am always lost. I am always content in this.
But I do know how to get home from the main roads. They’re not as pretty, though, and it’s a bit longer than the expert, Katzrin native pathways, twisting and winding around each other with footpaths and parks and locked gates and walkways alongside the creeks. Probably secret gardens. Probably if I take the right turn, I will discover a hidden portal to a kingdom in another dimension, possibly run by talking animals. I wouldn’t be at all surprised. You’re holding out on me, fellow Katzrin people, aren’t you? Where’s the portal to the secret kingdom? Where are my talking animals??
I was aaaaalmost home. Probably a five-minute rambling walk away, by the main roads on the borders. But. But. They are not pretty. What if I am missing out on secret gardens and hidden portals? I love walking through the inner roads of town. I never know what will happen or where I’ll end up.
Obviously, I took a shortcut. It was too pretty a day to not.
I am 100% certain there is a shortcut the way I went. I know because I walked it with someone else previously whose brain never switches the streets around. I just wasn’t able to find it this time. And…ended up walking around for another nearly hour. But it was super pretty and the weather was great.
Finally, I came to a park with children and parents. I somehow got involved in a soccer game thingy for a few minutes. I don’t know how this happened as we never really communicated that I was joining; the ball accidentally came my way on my walk, I kicked it back, they kicked it back to me again, I kicked it back to them; suddenly we were all playing together. I will count this as minor socialization and now I don’t have to speak to anyone else the rest of the day.
I don’t know their names but I know the little boy, around age six, was somewhat more talented than me at aiming the ball. Finally, after a few minutes, I surrendered and asked them where Tzipori was. They told me and I was 3/4ths certain I understood where he was telling me where to go (the conversation was in Hebrew), which is more certain than I was before the kick-the-ball game. I explained I was new (five months is new when it takes years to remember directions to your own home) and thanked them.
I took off to walk through the promenade with the creek, confident that I’d walked here before and I was only about five minutes from home again. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me; by this time I was quite tired. I would go the proper, 3/4ths likely way.
I talked to God a bit, informing Him/Her that although my preference was to sleep and therefore find my house as soon as possible, I was surrendering myself to Him/Her and please let me have a nice, enjoyable walk and take me according to Your will. Exactly two seconds later, I spied a familiar gate on a house about a block away and my spirits rose. I think that’s the gate at the beginning of my street! Only a couple blocks to go, I thought! And it was that exact moment, thinking only a couple blocks to go, when I stopped dead in my tracks. And turned my head.
And saw the banner of Israeli flags woven through a tree at the front of a house. It looked very, very much like the flags I wove through the tree at the front of my house last Yom Ha’atzmaut and kept up because otherwise I don’t have a chance in hell of recognizing my own home alongside all these look-alikes.
Facebook friends: I’d walked directly past my own house and only stopped because of the flags I saw out of the corner of my eye. That gate? Yes, it was at the end of my street. The other end. I was walking in the exact opposite direction I thought I was walking. Such is life when you are a Suzanne Musin.
Let it be noted that, two seconds after telling The Divine One Above, Below, and In My Pocket, Spying Upon All Like Big Brother that I preferred to be home so I can sleep, I was immediately RIGHT next to my house, even though I didn’t realize it at first. I don’t ask for favors but that’s pretty impressive. Points for style and promptness.
And now, I sleep. For at least three hours. Wish me luck!
