vintage 1982 - yom atzma'ut05

I arrived, via ship from Greece, in Haifa port in November of 1982. It was my first time in Israel, and I was coming to visit friends I'd met a year earlier in Canada. The circumstances of how we met and why I ended up living with them in a village 10 km outside of Jerusalem must be saved for another day.

Suffice it to say, I unintentionally "made aliyah" before I even knew the meaning of the phrase.

Israel was only 34 when I arrived, just half a decade older than me. My memories of how the country looked, the fashions that were in style, and the jarring Israeli mentality with its expectations of togetherness fit better with my image of North America in the 60s. The country was old-fashioned, not to mention hot and dusty.

Flash forward twenty-two and a half years -- and when I say "flash" I mean WHERE THE F*** DID THAT TIME GO?? A long time. A generation. The kids who weren't even born when I arrived have already completed the army. I'm working alongside some of them. The martini-glass-shaped personal trainer demanding from me 5 more reps was a newborn when I arrived. Menachem Begin was the PM. A long time has passed, even though I was a full-grown adult [chronologically-speaking] already, and still feel like I'm only maybe 10 years older than I was then.

And yet, in between, I got married, had a kid who is months away from being a teen, spent two of those years back in Toronto, and have survived about twenty jobs.

Israel's been through quite a bit too, and is certainly a sadder but wiser country at 57 than it was at 34.

The year I arrived, Arik Sharon was being vilified and eventually was forced to resign from government over his apparently barbaric behavior in the matter of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Everyone thought he was washed up politically. But today he's the same guy who is moving heaven and earth to do what, in opposition, he threw all his considerable girth into preventing: giving land back to the Palestinians and negotiating with them towards a Palestinian state. An elegant cosmic joke on Arik.

What a difference a couple of decades make.

Happy birthday, Israel.