Isaac Pasternack
Short Stories
11/8/07
The Move

    When I was one and a half years old I moved from New York City to Evanston, Illinois. Do not ask me to recount this move because I have absolutely no idea what happened, I was one and a half. But when I was six I moved from Evanston, Illinois to El Cerrito, California. This move I remember well.
    When you’re six there is not a huge amount of communication with your parents about their feelings. They don’t exactly share them with you, whether they like their jobs or how they, as parents, are getting along. Now I understand the move well, but at the time I didn’t really at all. I didn’t understand why my dad wanted to work somewhere else. It didn’t occur to me that he wasn’t happy at his current job, or that he was being offered more money in California than in Evanston. To my six year old brain, it was simply, “the move”. It was that day I watched the big orange moving van pull up to my house and drive away with my family’s life in the back.
    I realize now there was not a lot I was leaving behind, the way there would be if I moved today, but regardless it seemed like a lot. I had about three friends with whom I’d spent countless play dates building Lego fortress and playing make believe power ranger games with. I particularly remember one afternoon where my friend Matthew and I built a Lego space hotel. It was complete with two levels of rooms and a shuttle dock for new guests to park their ships. But then it was demolished by the foot of my three year old sister. I left these people, I had some kind of goodbye party but I never really saw the significance of the event as the end of a chapter of my life. It was at a park, thats all I remember of it.
    After the grueling five hour flight to Oakland we landed and after retrieving our bags we headed to our new house on Everett Street in El Cerrito. This house will be forever branded into my memory as “The Brown House.” It was a big wooden house and I was six, so naturally it needed a nickname. In retrospect giving the house a nickname gave it an odd sense of being temporary, which served the house well because about eleven months later we moved into a bigger house. The house I live in now has never had a nickname. I never called it “The Big Ugly White House” or anything like that.  
    I remember walking into The Brown House and asking my mom, “Where’s my toys and my bed?”
    “They had to drive those things from Evanston Isaac, they’ll be here in about two weeks, until then we have rented some furniture and we will have to just use it for right now.”
    “But mom, I need my Batman actions figures and my Legos to play with,” I felt alone without my twenty-five Batmans that all had different gadgetry and different colored outfits. Without my bin of Legos. Being without these items made me feel vulnerable and unprotected.
    “I’m sorry Isaac, I know it’s hard, maybe in the morning we’ll go to ‘Toys R Us’ and get a new Batman until the rest come,” my mom said reassuringly, but it did little to help my feelings.
    Those first two weeks could very possibly be the two scariest weeks of my life. I spent sleepless night after sleepless night scared of the burglar in my closet or the monster under my bed. This was my mind’s way of adjusting to a completely new place, by making me scared shitless all the time.
    My parents also began the tedious process of finding a school for me to attend. It did not help the situation that it was now the middle of August and school was starting about three weeks later. By that time almost every school was filled up, nowhere would take me. Finally my parents found an opening at Tehiyah Day School, a private Jewish school in El Cerrito.
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    My dad and I walk through the big metal gates of Tehiyah Day School. I am greeted by a big old wooden play structure which, in the following years, would serve a purpose as a space ship, a space station and sometimes the Millennium Falcon. We walk through the halls, which are painted with murals of all many diverse kids holding hands, an image that even at the time seemed weird because Tehiyah was an all Jewish day school.
    We walk into the administration office. I stand at my dad’s side while he talks to the lady about where we should go to meet my teacher. She tells him a room number and we head down the hall to find Judy Solomon’s room.
    We enter a big white classroom with artwork everywhere. There are paintings of practically everything, from sailboats to ladybugs to skyscrapers. There is a big rack of books, which I will learn to read within the following year.
    We are greeted by a curly haired woman with a funny sounding accent, “Can I help you guys?” she asks in what would soon become a very familiar voice to me.
    “Yes, are you Judy Solomon? I was told his is her room and I wanted to meet her in person-we just enrolled my son Isaac here,” my dad says.
    “Well she’s actually gone out for a coffee, buy I’m equally important, my name is Zehava Dahan and I will be Isaac’s hebrew teacher next year.” I will never forget Zehava’s thick Israeli accent.
    They shake hands and I begin to think that this new place is not going to be so bad. As my dad is explaining the move Judy Solomon walks into the classroom, “Oh Judy here you are, this is Andy Pasternack and this is his son Yitzhak,” Zehava never called me by my english name-only my hebrew name.
    “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. I remember your name from the new students list but it’s nice to meet you in person. Do you have any questions for me about the class or anything?” Judy Solomon’s voice was particularly memorable. It was calm with an unmistakable midwestern twinge; no surprises there she had grown up in Chicago like my mom. Judy would help me adjust to Tehiyah more than anyone else during first grade, and I stayed close with her during my whole Tehiyah legacy.
    Judy gives us a tour of Tehiyah. She introduces my dad to a few other teachers and tells us a bit about the curriculum of first grade. It all sounded exciting to me at the time, learning how to read, learning math, and we got three different recesses a day. My ambivalence about the new school has faded even more and I am even a little bit excited for the next year and what it will bring.
    The car ride home has a much better mood to it than the car ride there. The car ride home is one of optimism and excitement for what is going come. But this is all interrupted when my dad and I are greeted by my mom who has some bad news for us.
    “You guys, the moving truck broke down and its going to be another full week before we get our stuff,” she says with a heart wrenching sigh.
    “But mom, my Batmans,” I cry, tears coming into my eyes. I have been dealing with the burglars but I could not hold them off much longer, “I need my stuff, my room is scary without anything in it.”
    “Aw, sweetie, I know it’s hard but there's nothing I can do and we’re just going to have to wait. Plus our furniture now isn’t so bad, right?” She's referring to our rented sofas, which smell like gross new leather and plastic wrap.
    My mom hugs me and just repeats “it’s gonna be ok” over and over. But in reality this calming method has no affect, it just furthers my agitation.
    I suppose this was first time in my life when the my mother’s comfort did nothing to calm me down. In the past, most problems I had had were easily fixable with a hug or a band aid, but this was different. The move was the most grown up thing that had happened to me so far, and it was scary. In this situation there was little she could actually do. She couldn’t fix the moving van. She couldn’t magically teleport my Batmans to me. She couldn’t do anything.
    Now I had another whole week of suffering to look forward to but I soon forgot about my closet dwelling enemies as the first day of school rapidly approached. I got all the nessecary items I needed for my first day: Batman backpack, school year haircut and of course, dead sexy purple high top Chuck Taylors.
    As the first day got closer, my excitement began to dwindle and it digressed into its original form: pure red hot anxiety. It was an anxiety I would become very familiar with as my life went on. But at this point, all anxiety I had was focused on that first day.
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    I wake up. The sun is shining, and my heart is pounding. I eat my cinnamon toast crunch and go to watch cartoons. In Evanston, I had watched Scooby-Doo every morning before school but on this morning, I can’t seem to find it, so I watch Sonic the Hedgehog instead, which is mediocre in comparison. I am already sporting my purple Chucks and I still have an hour to go before I have to go to school, but when I got a new pair of shoes I would sport them night and day.
    It is my first day. My first day of school in a new school, in a new city, in a new state, yikes. I walk into my classroom with my parents as my entourage. Judy walks over and greets us, then my parents leave, my dad having to pull my mom out the door as she was very overprotective of her special little guy.
    I know it was first grade but when I walked into Judy’s class it really seemed to me like everyone had already formed their separate cliques. In retrospect it was basically boys and girls. But still, it seemed like a lot. At my old school we had all hung out together, partly because the teacher made us, and partly because we were all friends. Even at six, I could feel a real animosity from my fellow classmates at Tehiyah, and for some reason felt this animosity being directed at me.
    “Ok kids, lets sit down. I have some anouncements for all of you.” Judy said, she seemed happy to be back in action and I was happy she was happy.
    That year at Tehiyah there were three new students and even another student from Chicago but I was the only new one in my class, the rest were in Eileen’s class. So I was the only one Judy had to introduce to the class.
    “Ok guys, we have a new student joining us. Everybody give a warm welcome to Isaac Pasternack. He just moved here from Chicago, does anyone know where that is?” of course no one knew but it was a valuable question to ask.
    One kid raised their hand, “Yes Sam? What is it?” Judy asked. I was really hoping he was not gonna ask me a question.
    “Yes Judy, I believe it’s recess now, I could be wrong,” Sam said, for a first grader the kid was definitely an intellectual.
    “Oh, you’re right Sam, good job noticing the time. Ok well since its the first day I thought we might go across the street to the park for recess,” Judy told the class, everyone began to get excited, I didn’t know what “the park” was.
    “Since we have to cross the street we all need to find a buddy so everybody find a buddy and we’ll go.”
    Thinking back on this moment, it really reminds me of slow dances at a bar mitzvah party. Everyone awkwardly pairs and there’s always an odd man out, in this particular case I was the odd man.
    “Isaac come here,” Judy beckons me, “I thought since you were new I would find you a buddy because you don’t know anyone. Noah! Noah! Come over here,” a kid walks over, “this is Isaac, you guys are gonna be buddies today ok?” he nods and she walks off.
    “Hi, my name is Noah,” he says.
    “My name is Isaac,” I say.
    I will never forget the first time I met Noah Hansen. He was wearing a red polo and the collar was all messed up. He had a bowl cut which really went along with his chubby fingers. To top it off he had the most badass buckteeth I have ever seen.
    “Alright well it looks like everybody has their buddy so take each other’s hand and we’ll go to the park!” Judy says with an enthusiastic grin on her face.
    I reach out my hand, a little uncomfortable holding a boy’s hand, and having just met the kid. My dry palm is greeted with Noah’s sweaty, greasy palm. Nonetheless I still held his hand for the whole walk to the park across the street. As gross as I thought he was at first, we soon became best friends and stayed that way for almost ten years. Now he is my neighbor and I see him all the time.
    The park was great. Being the gregarious six year old I was I had no trouble fitting in with my classmates. We played on the dinosaur play structure and swung on the swings. I was a champion swinger, I could go higher than anyone else.
    Soon the day was over and my entourage returned to take me home. I went over and thanked Judy for helping me on my first day of school and then I went home.
    Upon my arrival I was greeted with my Batmans which had arrived that day. I finally became completely content with the whole move and I decided it was not such a bad idea after all.