The Day Of

When I officially got up on Monday morning the way to describe how I felt: nauseas. That’s one of those feelings that sort of takes over and pushes out everything else. All other thought and feeling goes out the window. I showered and put on a cute outfit (so not me but hey there were going to be cameras everywhere!!) that even made Nathan proud. Grabbed some orange juice because I was too nervous and nauseas to eat…thanks mom for telling me that on an empty nervous stomach OJ was probably a bad idea!
I got to talk to seth in the car on the way to the airport. He’s been great about clandestinely using his cell phone to call from camp over the past few weeks and wanted to make sure he could say goodbye. After that serious nausea set it. I asked my parents to stop talking to me and couldn’t even talk to david!! We got to the airport super early which is fine because I can’t even imagine how nervous I would have been if we’d gotten stuck in traffic or anything. The nefesh b nefesh (nbn) people hadn’t set up their desk yet so I had time to get over my nerves a bit. Check in was surprisingly easy. They had assigned us seats in advance (I got a window…bummer) so they would know where we were to make the documentation process in flight easier. All I had to do was take my ticket, scan my bags, and get a boarding pass. I was ridiculously high strung and snapped at my parents like there’s no tomorrow but in reality it was a pretty painless process.
The flight went out of the same terminal (and even the same gate) as my flight to spend my senior year in Israel. I felt overwhelmed with déjà vu at every turn and then we sat in the same spot to wait for the flight where we waited 3 years ago. After about 10 minutes sitting there I had to move. For whatever reason I felt negative about being in the exact same spot maybe as if I wasn’t really doing anything beyond going away for a little or maybe because it was just making me sad and forcing me to think about the last time I drastically left my parents to be so far away. Mom and I went into the duty free and we sent dad to the bookstore because he hates the overwhelming smell of the perfumes. I thought maybe I would buy something small for David, but I quickly understood what my dad felt and the fumes mixed with my nerves were a bad combination. It was really rough sitting there with my parents for our last hours together for a few months. I felt like we had said everything there was to be said about loving each other and missing each other and since I would get my phone shortly after arrival it wasn’t like we wouldn’t be speaking and communicating multiple times a day soon anyway. But at the same time I had a hard time looking at them. I love them and miss them terribly but we all knew that this is something I’ve been needing to do for a long time. I know they don’t think I abandoned them or ran away from them but standing there in the airport waiting felt like waiting for an execution. It seemed ridiculous to be there with them and tell them that I’m not abandoning them mere hours before I was going to get on a plane and do (it felt then) just that. Fortunately nbn is a pro at the whole aliyah thing. They had a ceremony which was a bit disappointing but at least it was a distraction for a good 45 minutes! Nathan also came to say goodbye. He took off work to come be with me and my parents for a bit.. I don’t know if I told him properly, if I was even capable of saying it then how much it meant to me that he took off work and schlepped both ways to jfk to be with me for barely 2 hours. I think it also helped me be able to be normal slightly because I was also thinking about leaving friends instead of worrying about my parents. Funny that I thought to worry. They are going to be fine, they were fine long before I came around to take care of them. Hopefully seth and dad will make a concerted effort to reduce sports time to be with mom so she doesn’t feel lonely but other than that I know life will go on in the Medvin house as usual and when I come to visit things will be wonderfully and peacefully exactly as I left them.
The entire process at the airport was being filmed and photographed for nbn purposes as well as general press. Mom joked that we weren’t interviewed or anything because we weren’t interesting enough. Some people had large dogs or infants or were 87…I was just a young woman moving away from my parents- nothing abnormal about that. The second I started crying I became more interesting than I probably would have liked. I was saying goodbye to Nathan we were both crying and the next thing I know he laughs into my ear “ we’re being filmed by the way”. Knowing that I was being filmed was probably the worst way to ruin a completely honest and heartfelt goodbye. Fortunately I didn’t realize the camera men were there until we were almost finished! They must have really liked the sight of me crying because as soon as I moved to leave my parents I had a whole flock of them watching. I tried to hide my face from the camera as much as possible because all I wanted to do was concentrate on them and not the fact that this might end up being memorialized in a promotional video for the next 5 years! Saying goodbye to them was awful. I don’t know if there’s any other word to describe it. I knew that once I got settled on the plane or in Israel with david I would be ok but the actual leaving saying goodbye and I love you one last time and turning around to walk through security was agonizing. I hope that this is the last time I will have to do that with them. Hopefully for the rest of my life we will be together often enough that I won’t have this huge feeling of dread and anguish when I have to leave them. I stopped crying in the security line but I almost started again when I saw that they were waiting and watching me so they could see me until I disappeared for real. As I was walking to the plane lugging two backpacks with a combined weight of way too much I was going down the terminal with a random nbn employee. He didn’t say anything to me didn’t really have any reason to but I felt bitter and angry toward him that here I was lugging heavy bags (he was carrying things also) and sniffling and he didn’t have any comforting words. In the end I’m glad he didn’t say anything because I probably would have resented his words and wished he had left me alone with my sadness and slowly growing excitement. What could he have said anyway? Nothing that everyone else hadn’t said to me before. I felt like I was walking down a deserted hallway to uncertainty and was really scared. Really scared. I knew this is what I wanted but it didn’t change the fact that I was petrified of the change and of what finally choosing a life would mean.