I was sitting at Tel Aviv airport, my husband next to me, my son sleeping in his carrier. It was late, and we were waiting for our flight home. I was deadly tired, but still couldn’t sleep. I didn’t mind, however, since the more common crankiness had been replaced by a pleasantly relaxed state of mind. It had been a wonderful, if short, holiday, and a beautiful wedding. It had been amazing to be back in Jerusalem without an agenda, back to all those magical places with the feeling of coming back, without the pressure of “having to see something”. It had been exciting and joyful to take my son and unborn daughter to this ancient place filled with that indescribable, extraordinary energy.

So my gaze started to lazily graze the waiting areas and shops, watching people carrying luggage and families saying goodbye to each other. My eyes got caught on a young woman sitting right next to us, traveling alone with what looked like a very large plastic covered pole. Who would go through the trouble of taking a carpet through Israeli security checks? I wondered. Why is she traveling alone, where is she coming from, where is she going? I got hooked on what I imagined to be this girl’s history, maybe because she reminded me of myself when I was traveling to Israel for the first time, or maybe just because I needed entertainment for my tired mind. Of course, being too tired and shy and feeling too ridiculous to actually strike up a conversation with her, I would never hear the real answers to those questions. But she was immersed in some paperback, and I decided finding out this book’s title would be as close as I would get to learning more about this person. So after a lot of eye straining and unsuspicious leaning over, I discerned she was reading Hugh Prather’s “Notes to Myself”. I had never heard of it, but made a note of the title nonetheless, vowing to definitely check it out back home, when the check-in process finally started and I lost track of the woman and subsequently forgot all about the book.

It was only months later, when I was looking for something completely different on the internet, that I found the note and remembered the girl at the airport who had become, in the short time in which our life’s coincided, some sort of symbol for a free and unbound life, the kind of life I deeply wish for for my family and myself. Meanwhile, I had had my second child and, since having children cracks you open in more ways than one, had re-evaluated my life, thinking a lot about how I wanted to live it for and with my family, and had finally dared to look at those life dreams and daring visions that had been safely tucked away in some far corner of my mind for fear they could disturb my comfortable day-to-day. Sensing this couldn’t be a coincidence, and following the only thing that I’m running by right now: my instincts (nothing else will help you with a newborn), I ordered the book. And indeed, when I started to read it the minute the small volume arrived in my hot, hot hands, I immediately had a feeling this might be exactly what I needed. On its very first pages, the book says “In our hearts, we can all sense the way home”. I’m thinking I have finally found mine, and how fitting that it should have found me through those intricately wrought incidences.

One Response to “The way home”

1. Best of 2009 – Book « The Mindwheels Says:
   December 6th, 2009 at 1:58 pm

   [...] Best of 2009 – Book December 6, 2009 I’m a bit behind due to a rather clingy infection, so I’ll make this short and sweet. The best book of 2009, for me, was (and still is) Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself. I have found more truth and wisdom in this small volume than I would ever have thought when I first came across the title at Tel Aviv airport (read the story of how the book found me here). [...]

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