We’re a family that plans. To travel using mileage points, it’s often best to book your trip 11 months in advance. Every summer, as we finished up our family trip to Israel, my husband would already be scanning flights and schedules for the following year. We booked the same apartment in Baka year after year with the same family, so eventually the apartment stopped feeling like an Airbnb and began to feel like our second home.

Planning gave us something comforting: predictability. We knew where we would be each summer, which grocery store had the fruit we liked best, which aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends we would see. Our children grew up with that rhythm. Sometimes that predictability felt boring to them. But I think that boring predictability, of returning to Israel again and again, instead of going somewhere new every year, helped build their identities. 

Now we have a post-army lone soldier, and travel for her looks completely different. But that identity still grounds her.  

She left in February planning to spend a week in........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)