The Golan Home

The time of rapid and oblivious progress in the house has almost ended. The wooden frames have been removed from the house, and the only thing left to do outside is finish the fence around the house. The house is standing, as you can see here:

Inside, the inner walls are being erected, with some of it done already. The kids bathroom, utility room, the shower wall inside master bathroom and the low wall in the living room are left. All about two to three days work.

We are shifting gears, but I’m not sure we are shifting down. While it looks like not much is happening, a lot of elements are coming in: electricity, plumbing and the door frames, followed by stucco.

We were busy picking out faucets (went for the low cost alternative), wood flooring for the living room/kitchen (opted for the upper mid-range alternative) and looking around for flooring for the rest of the house (finally decided on tiles for the living quarters, but far from finding what we want). I saw a very nice stone, called “sliced,” that I want to use for the walkway in the entrance to the yard and in front of the door.

Bath tiles, toilets, bath tub, basement floor, color of the house (outside), color of the house (inside), color of the kitchen cabinets, light fixtures, etc all need to be decided on. So goes for picking a carpenter, an aluminum guy (windows), landscaper… the list goes on.

The thing is that at this stage, a lot of decisions need to be made at once, some influencing each other. That is taking up a lot of time.

In the mean time, I’m in Antwerp to cover a diamond industry conference, so everything is done on remote control.

A year passed since Yuval’s death and he is still very present in our lives. We miss him, think about him, talk about him, even dream about him on occasion. A year of holidays and a summer, a year of planning and doing, a year of family events and friendly get togethers. A year without Yuval.

It’s surprising in a way. As the one year date was nearing, we didn’t find ourselves saying that ‘it went by so fast’. There was nothing fast about it. He was a presence in our life and touched us in a much unexpected way for some reason. Reason.

I feel our house is a sort of memorial, and that he is lucky to have been able to leave so many marks behind him. After all, we all want to be remembered after our deaths.

Yuval.

There was something tortured about him, even in his happiness. Pain always reflected from his eyes. I often felt a need to put a hand on him and hug him, in a fatherly way, despite him being older than me. Hug him and express warmth towards him and I never understood why. Maybe deep inside I felt his pain.

Was he constantly seeking a father figure? Assurances? Comfort or relief? I’ll never know. Looking deep into his eyes and his surprised and curious expression in when he noticed it, will be with me for a long time, together with the pain that hid in the corner of his eyes but always there.

We worked with him for about a year and he has been away for a year, but things are not balanced. There isn’t a reason why there should be a balance. The time is just a coincidence and does not have any special meaning in that regard, but we seek meaning wherever we can. Sometimes, too often, we fail to find it.

The very last ceiling was poured today. Hosam’s team is already busy with the fence (we are required to have it partialy made of cement) and the inner walls are slowly rising.

Tomorrow, October 2, will be three months since we broke ground. Shimon, our architect, estimates no more than two weeks left for Hosam to finish his part of the work.

Tomorrow we are going to see some wood flooring options. It’s an important decision because it’s as dominant (the entire living room and kitchen) as it is expensive. More on this later.