We left Israel for a short visit. We returned 15 years later

There are certain moments in life you rush through — and then spend the years afterward reliving in slow motion. Leaving our apartment for the last time in the small, close-knit yishuv we lived in right after shanah rishonah was one of those moments.

The catch is that when we left our apartment, I didn’t realize it would be permanent. Everything pointed to our return to that paint-chipped door three weeks later: There were the round-trip plane tickets, most of our worldly possessions patiently waiting for us inside, and my husband’s yeshivah schedule for the new zeman, complete with an all-star lineup of chavrusas.

But when those three weeks were over, that door remained closed, those possessions gathered dust, and the chavrusas found new partners. The weeks became months, and before we knew it, 15 years had passed.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2022 when, a lump in my throat and eyes full of tears, I finally came knocking….

My last morning in Eretz Yisrael began like many others that preceded it: battling morning sickness. I was expecting our first child, and the pregnancy was challenging my ability to function. But my brain was still working well enough to register that we were flying to America later that evening for Pesach break, and so I pushed myself to do the final packing.

A quick glance out the window mid-suitcase-stuffing convinced me that the pregnancy was now causing my eyes to play tricks on me.

Snowflakes!

Snow here in Nissan? Impossible!

I called my husband in a daze, and he confirmed there was a highly unseasonable snow predicted to fall on and off throughout the day, and that the one road to the airport from our yishuv was most likely going to close. We immediately called our airport driver to talk strategy, and he recommended finishing all last-minute preparations and monitoring the status of the road.

I hastily finished packing and went on “snowflake watch.” As a native Chicagoan, I found it laughable when the road was shut down that afternoon over an amount of snow that wouldn’t even slow down a Midwestern squirrel. But as the hours dragged on and the road remained closed, I began to panic.