Back to the Wilderness!

We might be moving.
We don't know.
We might live in this apartment, where my daughter was born, for another year... or we might be overseas, with our books slowly following by ship like so many jolly right-to-left tars, by the end of the month.

I pick up the ironing pile and realize: it is futile to finish this. In another week it could all be balled up in a suitcase.
Or it might not.
I go to the grocery store and wonder: is it worth buying that much honey? We might not have time to use it.
Or we might.
I continue to recopy my address book, with all its little notes: S likes chocolate, Y likes popcorn, bring a story for the children, 11:00 is the middle of the evening, call us for anything, she won't bite your head off, and wonder: am I ever going to need these addresses, numbers, and notes again? Am I ever going to see any of these people again?
Should I be packing? Or not?

"How are you not short-circuiting?" my friend asked.
I think it's because we have no control over the situation. We don't have to make a decision. So there's really nothing I can do but daven and daydream about the possibilities.
"It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book!" observed my neighbor.
"Right," I said, "but we don't get to choose!"

It's kind of exhilarating, actually.
It's Exile, but no one ever said we weren't still in Exile.

I am reminded of a dark joke I once heard from Rabbi B.
"You know why so many Jews are violinists, right?"
"No, why?"
"Because it's hard to run with a piano on your back."

We are running, but not from Russia to Poland.
We have it so easy.
I feel like... like we are going into Galus on the Atchison-Topeka & Santa Fe.