Last week, right before school started, we received this schedule (included below) in an email. When I opened it, I sat and admired it for a few minutes. Now, I know it’s unusual to get goosebumps over a bus schedule, but that’s exactly how I reacted. This is one of the many, many examples of how our lives here take my breath away. 

As you may be able to deduce from the pages and pages listed below, this is a bus schedule for Gush Etzion. It shows the times that the buses will arrive to pick kids up for school from each of the yishuvim (communities in the area). And it gave me goosebumps for two reasons.

Can you imagine the children of Kfar Etzion, who lost their parents in the fight for our lives in ’48 and who lived in Jerusalem for years waiting to come back, seeing this schedule? Can you imagine the founders of Neve Daniel (with whom we live in great admiration today), coming to this crazy barren mountaintop, driving through Bet Lechem in convoys to get here, looking at this schedule? Can you imagine my neighbor, who recently recounted how her kid was in the first graduating class at the local elementary school and how there were 5 kids in the class, looking at this schedule? 

This is a schedule of LIFE, of life bursting with the sound of children; it’s the schedule of thousands upon thousands of children who live, today, in the hills of Gush Etzion. It’s the sound of the future, all organized by community, by bus and by school.

And the second reason that this schedule gives me goosebumps is because of its convenience. Every July, I see the puzzle of schedules that my friends in America create for their lives. They start early, piecing together the schedule of who will bring to this school and who will bring home; how many car seats they’ll have to switch off and who will then deliver the kids to piano and swimming and baseball. And my schedule? Well, my schedule is listed below. The kids get on a free bus at 7:30 in the morning a block from my house. And they return on that bus at 2:45 (or 3:45 or whenever) to the same spot. And then they walk down the street to their art class, their music class and their swimming class. And while I have many kids (thank gd), I have very little planning that goes into my daily schedule. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

Before we made Aliyah, Josh came home with the book by Daniel Gordis called “If a Place Can Make You Cry.” For 12 years now I’ve been amazed by the many, many ways that this place can make me cry, both in joy and grief. But when a bus schedule can get you teary eyed and feeling grateful, you know you’ve come home.