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March 26, 2010
What’s enslaving you?
Knowing what holds you back has healing power.
GAYLYN YOUNG
Two years ago, on Pesach, Rabbi Shmuel Birnham spoke about the Israelites leaving Mitzrayim (Egypt) and commented that not all of them left with the Exodus. That was a completely new idea to me. They didn’t all leave? Perhaps many of them were afraid of taking a chance, of leaving what was familiar, even if it was a subsistence living ... hard, cruel, mean. Then he asked, “What’s enslaving you? Is it your job? An addiction? Your reliance on technology? A bad relationship with someone?”
At the time, I lived close enough to Har El to walk and, as I walked home, I thought hard about his words. What is enslaving me? Would I go with Moshe today? Would I take a chance? The answer suddenly came to me: it’s the house! The house is what’s holding me back.
The house was the house my parents had bought for $9,000 in 1953. It was the house to which I was brought home from the hospital. It was the house in which I grew up. It was the house I came back to after university when there was a housing crisis and I couldn’t find an apartment. It was the house my husband and I lived in and to which we brought our children home from the hospital when they were born. It was the house my mother has left screaming, in the late stages of dementia. It was the house, the yard, where the ashes of my mother and brother were buried.
It was the neighborhood I loved; near a park and a creek for the dogs to splash in. It was within walking distance of the school my children and, even I, had attended, a grocery store, a coffee place and, most importantly for our family, a library. How could I think of living anywhere else?
But there was a problem. The house was in poor condition. My mother could never keep up with the maintenance after my father died when I was 10 years old. She struggled to pay the mortgage and keep my brother and I fed. My husband, Rob, didn’t work, instead looking after our son for several years when he couldn’t go to school. By the time Sam was able to go to school, my mother was so severely disabled from rheumatoid arthritis that she needed constant care. Again, it was Rob who stayed home and took care of her. When my husband and I did manage to put together some money to try to make improvements, my mother resisted. By the time she passed away, the house was in terrible condition. We could afford to live there, but we couldn’t afford to make all the necessary repairs.
I knew at once that I was being enslaved by the house. It was sucking me dry. It took all my money and still the roof leaked, the drainage was poor, the garden was overgrown and the taxes were getting to the point where I struggled to pay them. Even if I had the resources, I didn’t know if I could manage everything it needed. I hadn’t done the probate on my mother’s estate because I knew in my heart that when that was done, I would have to sell the house because I couldn’t afford to pay the probate.
Making the decision to let go was phenomenal. It lightened my spirit; took away the anxiety that had haunted me since before my mother’s death. From that moment on I began to call the house Mitzrayim ... the narrow place in which I had been dwelling.
Immediately after Pesach, I began the process of selling the house. I did the probate, talked to real estate agents and finally sold the house to a builder. After we were gone, the house would be torn down. I didn’t regret it for one moment.
We bought a beautiful, newly redecorated townhouse in Lynn Valley. It’s near a park and a creek for the dogs. It’s within walking distance of the school my husband once attended, a grocery store, a coffee place and, most importantly for our family, a library. We call it Zion, which can sometimes mean Utopia, and it’s a very long distance from Mitzrayim.
Gaylyn Young is the editor of the Har El Star newsletter, where a version of this article first appeared.
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