Part 7: Herzliya

My new workplace was in between Hod HaSharon and Petach Tikva. I dropped my things at my old-time friend, a resident of Herzliya and started my office life. Nothing to share about my new role: I just commuted daily to the office, typed letters on the screen and commuted back. It's not that I haven't done anything of significance, but I did more or less standard things the standard way.

The office life looked like a sort of adult kindergarten, something that amused me a lot during the first weeks. I and my coworkers enjoyed very little responsibility but had to have lunch at specific times of the day and did some fun stuff the rest of the time. Later, the stuff I did lose the appeal, but the first weeks were nice.

My first goal was to find a new place for us. It was challenging in the Tel Aviv area a few months before Corona: renters were competing for the apartments, and landlords enjoyed the bull market trend by raising the prices frequently and imposing some extra requirements. The fact that I am an employed software developer helped a lot: Many times, people were not happy to deal with someone whose Hebrew exposed his recent immigration, but just mentioning it soothed all the alarms as if it were some magic spell.

Finding a rental apartment is a function of time and money. My time was limited by my desire to leave my friend's couch and see my family. On the other hand, money was scarce and unknown, as I had yet to understand our budget for necessities, so I opted for a minimal sum of money. A month into the search, I could finalise the contract for a small but well-maintained 2-bedroom apartment in a neighbourhood known in the past as quite a dangerous place to live and now was just a little scuffed.

The apartment was in a run-down building with many tubings and wires exposed in an open view. That was one of the reasons my landlord was not very greedy, and I did not have much competition. One compelling thing was the option to purchase the furniture of a previous renter: a pair of students were moving out.

About a month after I moved in, Olga and Mark arrived. I remember the day I was waiting for them at the airport: I was thinking about what would be less intimidating for my wife: the dark and beaten-up neighbourhood after sundown or the ugly sight of our new home in the streams of the setting sun. Our destiny was to arrive late, and I will never know what would've shocked her more, but I recall that the effect was profound and sufficient for her to be a bit down for the first few days.

It was a hectic period: I worked full time, and Olga and Mark tried to adapt to life in our new place. We had to start from scratch: filling our apartment with furniture and smaller items, learning where to get groceries and befriending the neighbours.

This building I described in detail appeared to be a hidden gem for us: Mark just arrived and desperately needed new friends. He had not yet started to speak Hebrew, so he needed some Russian-speaking friends. It appeared that two families with kids his age are also living just next door! It has been more than two years since we left this place, but to this day, those kids frequently see Mark, and we often see their parents. Remember how hard it was to find someone you like in Ashkelon? Here, in Herzliya, it was so different!

We met many people during the first months there who are our friends to this day. Most of our first batch of friends were from Russian-speaking families with kids the same age as Mark, and later, more Hebrew and English-speaking families entered our circle. We were frequently invited to visit them and vice versa, so we were not socially deprived anymore, which helped a lot down the line.

Mark's adaptation was not easy: the kindergarten he was assigned to was run by a sturdy lady with many virtues but little empathy. She ran the house full of screaming Israeli boys and girls with the vigour and confidence of a seasoned sergeant. It was not something Mark expected to see, and there was very little good to recollect during his first year of education. He became detached and did not participate in the educational activities she led. I praise God for giving him relief in a couple of friends he acquired there. Unfortunately, we could not comprehend it on time, so Mark spent an entire year in this institution.

Later, this lady played a positive role: as he did not participate in the classes, she stirred the process of putting our son into the special education system. Despite the harsh sound of it, that was something wonderful! The following year, he spent time with a smaller group of Hebrew-speaking kids surrounded by many professionals who helped him overcome the difficulties of communicating in Hebrew. He quickly opened up and started to talk to everyone around, made new friends and became a happy boy. He entered a school the next year, having sufficient soft and hard skills of a first-grader. Now, as he is attending a third grade (ד), I see this year in special education as a blessing.

That was not so easy with Olga. She was reluctant to enter Israeli society as she longed for her Moscow life. She has many things to lose: her relationship with the Russian language was much more intimate than mine. Her career was connected to it as she was working in the publishing business, her friends were there, and she did not feel the same as I do towards the Russian move to totalitarianism. Even when the full-blown Ukrainian invasion started, she still felt like she would like to go back.

Her life was hardly bearable: she was depressed and went through some dark times during the next couple of years. I was increasingly more anxious, did not know how to help, and probably was not capable of helping her.

My life was not peaches either, as I am very much dependent on the well-being of my family; I was anxious to overcome the difficulties that my wife and son had and probably did more harm than good.

That initial adaptation to the new reality and learning to live together again took us over three years. It was a bumpy ride, to say it mildly. It's a hard part to write: immigration for us, and many families we witnessed, was like a planned car accident: you put all your family members in the car, wish everyone good luck, accelerate and slam into the wall, hoping that everyone will survive and the wall will crack.

If you compare it with the family's internal struggles, overcoming the external stress was peanuts. Fighting for a place under the sun emptied us, and then we were to fill ourselves with something else; we were to meet the new people who emerged from this process and get to know and love them anew.

I started this story by mentioning our dog, Baton. That's my first dog friend! Throughout my life, I never understood the deal with pets and perceived pets as a burden and tool for emotional sublimation. What a snobbish prick I was!

Meeting Baton was a miracle that changed our relationship dynamics. Through his love, we gained new strengths, met new people, and our life got an additional dimension that we have explored together.

Many old friends are surprised to see me, once a self-proclaimed pet-sceptic, happily sharing my home and even my pillow with Baton. That's the crux of our journey – I am not who I was before. We are not who we were before. We've grown, learned, and loved in new ways, and Baton's arrival symbolised the start of this new chapter.

Reflecting on this journey, I realise it's more than a physical move from one country to another. It's a journey of transformation, redefining home and family, and learning to embrace change with open arms. And in this journey, we found not just a new place to live but a new way to live.