Carpe diem

It was the bedroom set that taught me the lesson. Procrastination doesn’t accomplish anything.  I was 19 and newly engaged to be married when I walked past Goldfinger’s Interior Design on Newark’s Lyons Avenue and saw it in the store window. I showed it to my former fiance, now my husband, hoping that he loved it too. I was set to walk in and buy it.  He saw it and agreed. But then, all the mavens in both our families pitched to us that it was the wrong way to make a presumably lifetime purchase. We had to first “shop” all over and see every bedroom set in every store within about a 50-mile radius. So we did. Off to Brooklyn, to Daniel Jones in Manhattan, and every reasonable place that anyone recommended. And then we came back to Goldfinger’s and bought the first one we had seen.

I tell you this because it was a lesson learned and remains a template of our marriage. If we want to do something, and we are able to do it, we just do it. We don’t ask for the opinions of others. We don’t weigh and measure and figure and plot and plan. We are the carpe diem people. We understand that tomorrow may never come so seize the day, today!

Thus, following our new great-grandson Gabriel’s brit in Manhattan, we decided we would go to Israel to celebrate when Shosh delivered our next great-grandchild.  It would be very soon, and there was that war to contend with.  No matter, we were going.

We heard about Mekimi’s arrival on a motzei Shabbat.  By Sunday our tickets had been bought and two days later we were on our way.  After all, you’re only young once!

We spent lots of special  time with Mekimi and her brother, 19-month-old Nael, and their parents. And a couple of weeks later, after a visit that included numerous trips to shelters, we were returning to New Jersey.

Necessity forced us to find a new route. United was poof. El Al, which had earned universal praise in previous wars, was nowhere to be seen during this current situation. Hence, on the inbound trip we had flown to Rome and connected to Israel with Arkia, on a roundtrip ticket. On the expected return Arkia disappointed us, and probably thousands of others, as our reservation was canceled a day before we were scheduled to leave.

So there we were, ready to go, spurred on by one of our daughters, who had fallen while jogging in Manhattan and needed surgery to repair her significant injuries. Of course we wanted to be there. Of course we were not!

We listened to all the tales of many disappointed American travelers in Israel. People were doing unheard of things to get back to the states. Many were hiring so-called concierge travel services, which seemed very unattractive to us. For a pricey $900 per passenger, a taxi would come for you in the middle of the night and drive you to catch a flight in Taba or Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, or Aqaba, Jordan.  It would be a long drive on very dark desert roads. We decided to find a better way.

And we found one! With thanks to the embassy of the United States we made our exit and had a memorable adventure. The trip simply  could not have been better.

The embassy provided us with free bus transport to Amman, Jordan, a city we had long wanted to visit due to its proximity to Jerusalem, where we’ve had an abiding relationship since 1970. The bus was comfortable and the crowd of fellow Americans congenial. We changed buses at the border and found the Jordanian bus, and driver, to also be clean, comfortable, safe, and hospitable. Friendly representatives of the embassy, in Israel and in Jordan, accompanied us.

As we rode the modest highway that was to take us from the Jordanian border to Amman, we soaked in the environment of a foreign country. One small town after another, some seemingly impoverished and others more affluent. The terrain was totally familiar, looking exactly like Israel, its neighbor across the River Jordan. It was all fascinating. We felt like tourists, not refugees. It was certainly not heroic or threatening in any way.

When we neared the airport to drop off some of our fellow passengers, we saw a modern and very attractive terminal, home to Royal Jordanian Air and a host of other airlines, surrounded by  more contemporary and well-kept surrounding neighborhoods than we had previously driven through.  Lovely homes and substantial retail, all looking very new and prosperous.

Amman is a lovely city, hilly like Jerusalem, with some extravagant homes, and as I saw during the night, a very lively nightlife, with considerable traffic below our 10th-floor hotel window, continuing until after 4 a.m. The people we saw in our hotel public areas were cosmopolitan, extremely stylish and well dressed.

The embassy housed us in the Four Seasons. Needless to say, it was superb, among the finest hotels we have ever lodged at in a lifetime of serious travel.

We left for the airport at 7 a.m. to catch our Royal Jordanian flight to Athens, and then continued to an Emirates flight to Newark. Both flights were excellent, totally professional, with the Emirates flight offering kosher food on a pre-order basis. Service was consistently outstanding on both flights in every respect. We had been told not to be demonstrably Jewish, so Alvin did not wear his kippah or Camp Ramah cap, but my sense was that nothing untoward would have happened if he had. Of course, it bears mentioning that the map provided in the Emirates magazine had a strange omission: every nearby  country  was identified except for one. I leave it to the reader to figure out which one.

So we had ourselves an adventure and are now back in New Jersey,  praying for a cessation to the endless air raids and trips to bomb shelters, for our family and our people, and for peace to reign in the Land.  Ose shalom bimromav, aleinu v al kol Yisrael!

Our only postscript is: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the lands in proximity to Israel had peaceful and open borders so that we could visit storied places like Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, Baghdad, and cities and attractions further afield?  That won’t happen for us but perchance for Mekimi and Gabriel, their siblings and cousins, and all those in the future who seek peace and amazing adventures.

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of 11. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com