and in the end, there's a beginning

as I was furiously, madly packing tonight (this morning?) Adam turned to me and said, "Our year in Israel is over. It's over." And while I've really known and felt it for a while, as my year really ended two weeks ago, there's something really final about this moment. I'm sitting in the airport, using the wireless in the rotunda at Ben-Gurion, having checked my bags (one slightly overweight and one slightly under, so no charge), listening to a "Yeridah" (the opposite of "aliyah," a descent from Israel to abroad) mix I made myself, having gone through passport control (I may have gently giggled when she stamped the exit stamp), having closed out all the learning and experiences and times I've had and encountered and underwent these past 11 months, almost exactly to the day. 

Today, June 9th, marks 11 months and 1 day. I suppose there's something poetic in that period; it's one day longer than the initial 11-month mourning period, but it was the opposite, a backwards mourning, an 11-month celebration time. Or something like that. If I was more awake and alert (the flight from Bangkok to Tel Aviv was horrendous and today was a whirlwind) I could work in a metaphor or two, but I'm not going to. 

I will leave you with this thought, perhaps remarkable to some of you, to whom this is may seem like a "duh moment," but for me, it will be a moment of transcendent amazement: When I arrive at US passport control, on US soil for the first time in over 11 months, I will not look at the monkey mug of President George W. Bush, but I will be in fact staring at the face of President Barack Obama, a face of hope, of change, a face of coming home and finding the world a little better than when you left, of being able to look forward to something grander than now, and a face beckoning a giant leap forward into the great, blinding future.