I was about 5 years old, a curious kid, finally in what felt like a permanent home.  Someone had left a ladder going up to the “boidem” (known generally as an attic).  It was really only a shelf built below the ceiling of the hallway.  I climbed up, eager to find out what was there.  Old suitcases, vaguely familiar, but what hid inside them? I managed to lift the lid of the first suitcase, when I heard the front door open.  As I quickly scrambled down the ladder, my mother came in, and sensed that I was up to no good. “What did you do up there?” she asked, and I told her that I did not manage to go up, since I heard her come in. Hidden in the suitcases were guns.

The year was 1946, and the British still ruled Palestine.  We lived in a small new community surrounded by orange groves, and were often subject to curfews due to the activity of the various Jewish underground groups against the regime.  An officer was missing, and the British soldiers went house-to-house searching for any evidence. The British officer who came into our home was all smiles, and handed me a candy.  He asked if I ever saw a gun in the house, and my parents held their breath when I answered “Yes.”  His eyes became serious and he asked “Where?” When I pointed to his gun and said “Here,” there was laughter and a sigh of relief.  He left us alone, and I got a hug.

The second time I went into a boidem was when we cleared my mother-in-law’s home after she died in 1990 in Winnipeg. It was a crawl-space reachable by ladder from the children’s room. All we found there were many packages of toilet paper. Permanence.

The first time I encountered suitcases was at the age of two and a half, when we fled the Nazis from Romania on our way to Palestine in 1944. My mother, father, brother and I were allowed to carry 10 kg each. The boat was equipped with bunk beds; suitcases of many different sizes, colors, and materials filled the spaces all around. The smell stays with me till today. A mix of damp paper, leather, and stale food, which no one could avoid. We escaped being handed over to a German boat that would have taken us to the concentration camps thanks to my father’s overhearing the deck hands talking in Turkish, which he understood.  The captain was “persuaded” to change course and we ended up at sea for 2 weeks, with no water or food.  We survived due to the generosity of the Bulgarian population that provided us with water and some food whenever we reached land close to a village in the fjords. Those suitcases went with us from Turkey, where we finally arrived, through Syria and Lebanon by train to Palestine, where the British placed us in the Atlit internment camp. We were all fumigated, including the suitcases.

Suitcase is a symbol of impermanence, of the need to be vigilant and prepared to flee, to find a safe place.  What do you take with you, and what do you leave behind? My colleague and friend Judith Siano has used suitcases in her workshops as an art therapist to explore feelings of safety and the need for vigilance. On the cover of her book “Holy Junk” she is shown with her special suitcase in which she kept found objects that became treasures.  The suitcase container became a symbol of recreating our life again from what we carry and find along the way.  Her life began in Switzerland, but she also ended up in Palestine, now Israel, creating and recreating, working with trauma which we all carry with us in our suitcase of life.  Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist, saw the suitcase as a symbol. To him, baggage or pieces of luggage very often meant complexes; therefore, those dreams where you are hurrying to change trains and discover you have a great pile of luggage and no time to carry it to the other train mean that you are not getting over your complexes. There are too many, and the unconscious is overburdened.

In waking life, we are often overwhelmed by choices we have to make in order to preserve our safety. Do we leave our home, family and friends when we have an opportunity for a safer future, or stay no matter what? We can not predict the future, and every decision in such a dilemma changes the course of the rest of our life and the lives of those closest to us.  Even when a plan was already established to try a new place for a few years, then circumstances changed and suddenly we had to leave in a hurry, I was left with a feeling of abandoning ship. Having to pack a suitcase in a hurry for my little boy of four and a half, myself, and my husband, was splitting my insides.  The country was facing war again. The suitcases weighed a bit more this time, but again I felt I had to flee, perhaps for the life of the unborn baby I was carrying inside me, and the little boy who deserved a chance to a better life.  We left on an emergency flight two weeks before the Six-Day War. For ten years, while building a home with my Canadian husband and three lovely children in a welcoming community in Canada, I felt like I am sitting on my suitcases, ready to head back at any moment.  Only after the disappointment of a sabbatical year which did not end with a job offer did I finally unpack and settle down.

On our thirtieth wedding anniversary, we packed our suitcases again—this time with fifty kg each—and flew to settle in our new home.  All three children (grown up at that point, one married with a lovely first daughter-granddaughter) were left behind, as we started a new chapter in our life. Needless to say, it was not a real retirement, at least not for me.  My professional life flourished, and we reestablished old friendships, family ties, and created new connections in our new community.  We also felt a need to take part in the life of our expanding family. Our oldest son also got married, and more grandchildren entered our life.  We needed to be part of their life, and enjoyed having them be part of ours.  Thus started the era of packing our suitcases again and spending five months a year in Canada appreciating and enjoying, being a part of the children’s and grandchildren’s development.  The other seven months were spent at our home in Israel. Needless to say, the winters were spent in Israel and the summers in Canada.  We were snowbirds who flew a very long distance.  The original suitcases were long abandoned in the attic, and slowly we replaced even the replacements. We continued to maintain this lifestyle in spite of changes in the world and in our circumstances. The grandchildren are grown up now; they’ve all finished university and are pursuing their own lives.

COVID was the first big change to everyone’s lifestyle. Travel became harder and flying fraught with the possibility of being infected. After October 7, 2023, the world changed both in Israel and in Canada. The shock and the feeling that the rug was puled out from underneath us undermined our feeling of safety and trust.  The ongoing war and the enormous number of casualties brought a feeling of being under a constant grey cloud. The whole country is still in trauma.  In Canada and around the world antisemitism raised its ugly head, and it was even dangerous sometimes to be openly Jewish.  All flight companies except El Al, the national Israeli carrier, stopped flying to Israel. We were stranded in Canada, and spent eight months there instead of five.

In spite of the difficulty and the physical toll on our bodies, we will have to pack our suitcases again, and take a flight back to Canada in two and a half months from now, since we are determined not to miss our first granddaughter’s wedding. It is becoming harder to carry the suitcases – we no longer are able to handle them on our own. In two years it will be again thirty years, and perhaps we will celebrate our sixtieth wedding anniversary in the air, coming back from Canada to our home in Israel. How long will we still be able to pack and unpack our suitcases? Will we need to get yet another set? If we decide to put them in the “boidem,” which one will we chose: the one in Canada, or the one in Israel? In the meantime all of our large suitcases are still waiting to be stowed. They adorn the space leading to the stairs going up to the loft.  Only the carry-on suitcases will stay in our bedroom, ready to roll at a moment’s notice…