Rant #3,215: Beginnings

Happy Columbus Day!

As Christopher Columbus steered the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria to a new and mysterious land in 1492, in 2023, my family and I will soon be steering moving vans into new and uncharted territory.

Due to circumstances way beyond our control, my family and I will be moving to a new abode later this year, and when that happens, it will pretty much close the chapter on this nightmare saga we have been going through for the past couple of months, and really, the past couple of years.

We will be moving to a neighboring town into an adult development that is on the borderline of two counties, and like what Christopher Columbus found when he came here, this move will be our own “New World.”

We are trading in private home living for an apartment lifestyle, lessening our living space by 50 percent but at twice the price.

As I said last week, we had an epiphany, where we felt we really didn’t belong in this house that we once called home.

This past weekend, as we were throwing out more and more stuff we cannot possibly take with us, an inspector came here, looking over the house for the possible new owner.

He was here about three hours, looking at every nook and cranny inside and outside the home, and we just felt like outsiders in the place we have called home for 30 years (me, 50 years), and it is not a good feeling.

Last week, my wife made numerous calls to a variety of living possiblilities, and we went to visit a few of them in person.

Due to a variety of reasons, we chose one development which we can call home, and hopefully today, we can finalize everything, and really start preparing for the big move.

And it is not going to be an easy move, on a variety of levels.

We have so much to move, and that is after throwing out bag after bag of things we won’t be moving.

We have so many bags in front of the house right now it is as if we are preparing for the next big rain storm, and we are using the bags to prevent water seeping into the house.

Or maybe it looks like we have built our own war bunker.

But moving all of what we are actually taking with us over to the new residence is going to be interesting.

So right now, we are feeling a variety of emotions.

We are happy, yet sad, jubilant, yet nervous.

We are hoping that everything goes OK, and we are worried that our son can acclimate to our new surroundings—he knows no other home than the one we are moving from, and I just know it is going to be the hardest on him.

But he will get through it, just like we, as a family, will get through it … look, the new residence is not perfect; there are things that we already don’t like about it, including conveniences that we had that we won’t have in the new place.

But my wife and I decided that we can get through all of that, and make this into something outstanding … and I think that we can really do that, or at least I am telling myself that.

Here we are talking about a major move for my family, and on the other side of the world, we are talking about real hurt, real dismay, real pain and real chaos.

Hamas’ attack on Israel tells the world, in big, bold letters, exactly what their true intentions are.

They look to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and this has been the goal of the Palestinians and much of the Middle East since 1948, when the state of Israel was created.

Hamas took Israel by surprise, and they know that with the tactics that they used, the Jewish state simply cannot annihilate the Palestinians; they are going to have to be very careful in what they do to retaliate.

Of course, many blame Israel for this current state of affairs, but it is quite clear—and has been clear for decades—that Israel is pretty much by itself here, even though the U.S. has vowed that it stands by one of its great world partners.

And, in a minor point of this whole mess, just go onto Facebook and see all the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric you will find now crawling out of the rat holes.

It is disconcerting, and so very unfair as to be unbelievable, in nature, that people can actually believe what they are writing.

Here, I worry about a place to live, while Israelis—and yes, I have a couple of relatives who live there—worry about not only their homes, but their very lives and their very existence.

Kind of makes my problem minor in comparison.