Sunday, January 9, 2011

Here's my Dilemma

OK. Here's my dilemma....I need help sorting it out.

I have had enough of city life. I have decided I am NOT a city person. I do NOT like living with people above and below me. There are (many) days were I do not want to see, hear or smell my neighbors. I do not want to sit out on my microscopic slab of concrete that passes for a "balcony" and inhale the exhaust fumes of the humanity roaring past our building every day. I want to be able to step outside my front door and smell the earth, watch the ants scurry, hear the wind and the birds and the grass growing. At the end of the day, I want to be able to sit out on my porch with a mug of coffee and listen to the silence. THAT is what fills me up and nourishes me. I don't want to look around me and see MORE concrete. I want LESS. I want a small patch of earth that I can dig in.

You get the picture.

So what's stopping me?

1) Money. EVERYONE would like to live on  a moshav "in the country". EVERYONE would like a private house. Therefore these sorts of places have become very pricey. WAAY out of our league - even if we were to consider renting. Forget buying.

2) Husband. He's dragging his feet. He doesn't feel the urgency or the need to get out of the city like I do. He's happy with the status quo. Doesn't get it when I go on and on about the filth and noise of the city and how I wish I could shoo my kids outside for them to amuse themselves/wear themselves out without me having to accompany them to make sure they don't run into the street.

3) My job. I can now say that after 16 years in the country I FINALLY have found a job that I like, where they appreciate me and show it. I suppose if there's one job like this one in the country there might be more but I feel like with my track record for landing in jobs with the maniacs of the maniacs for bosses, I shouldn't give this one up so fast. (DH works from home so is not limited to a location for his work.)

4) Schools. Each of my three offspring are in gan or school situations that we are happy with - quality-wise and price-wise. Again, I suppose it is possible to recreate that somewhere else but where? And how? That is also NOT something to be sniffed at.

An elderly woman we know recently lost her husband and they owned a darling house in Gan Yavne (about 25 minutes from where we now live). She will be moving to Netanya and she phoned us up last night to ask us if we'd be interested in renting her house. Gan Yavne has exactly the sort of atmosphere that I'm looking for - suburbs surrounded by huge swaths of agricultural land - even if you can't see it you can sense it's there. Very few multiple-storey apartment buildings. It is QUIET which is what I'm looking for but that's about all that can be said for it. Could we afford the rent she is asking? Would DD6 have a social life there? I heard the schools there are lousy and people send their kids out of Gan Yavne for school. Is there a shul there where we'd feel comfortable? Anglos for DH? We can't afford a 2nd car so.....that means I'd have to take the car to work every day leaving DH at home with the kids and without a car AND I'd be adding a 20 minute (at least) commute onto each end of my day. Sounds like an awful lot of uprooting for a years' experiment to see if we like the area.

But I love the house and the area's atmosphere! Sigh.

So.

How long do I have to put MY wants and needs on the back burner for the good of everyone else?? Thinking of waiting to make a move like this until DD6 is finished with elementary school (5 more years) sounds like a heck of a long time and what do I do with my frustrations with our location until then?? This longing to leave the city is taking up a lot of my mental energy and is becoming all-consuming. Rehovot certainly has a lot to offer religiously, educationally, culturally, socially for us. But something is still missing for me........What place has all that AND what I'm missing?

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