A Midrash

 

...for whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people,
thy God my God
—Ruth 1:16

Once you're resolved to go, there was
nothing to it at all.
—Jeanette Walls

What will I do if I go to my place of birth? Who will remember me? Who will take me in? The people I left will see me as one who left the familiar, her own gods, and ran after an alien people. Some will turn their backs to me?.


Leaving is never easy. How would I manage?  Yet I couldn't stay. I spent time solving the easy parts—where to live, what to pack, opening bank accounts, and setting up a budget. Moving was easy—I packed and the movers came for the large pieces. A friend helped me stack paintings, albums, small items in her car trunk. I made trip after trip with clothes, dishes, pots and pans, and odds and ends like high boots for deep snow.
A friend stayed the first night. We unrolled sleeping bags and set-up in the loft. It took several weeks until I put away books, taking care to order them in categories—poetry on three bookshelves.


I'll be a stranger wherever I go—will I even understand the way people speak to one another? I remember the food my mother cooked, the delicate aromas. I wonder if Naomi wanted us to return to our birth home in Moab because she's embarrassed returning to her home with foreign daughters-in-law.


Such a release to leave—