Good to have you home
This is it. Today the affair will no longer be just a t-shirt expressing the longing for Gilad. No more stickers, bracelets and posters.
From today, there will no longer be a fleeting photo or a quick glance. Gilad Shalit arrives home today, to his own lookout ["Mitzpe" in Hebrew]. He will sleep in his own home, his own room. He will certainly begin to learn everything anew - the photos, the colors, the odors, things he perhaps forgot. He will take a bottle of water from the fridge, sit in his living room peering out at the surrounding scenery, take his shoes off, and simply be there.
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He may get excited to see the 753 members of his community silently lined up along the road in honor of his arrival. He has never experienced anything like this before. It is something that happened overnight when he was abducted and led to mass support for him. He may even be slightly embarrassed by it. He will probably blush upon seeing such a display in his honor. He will ask his mother if this is all for him. She will tell him that it is, and gradually expose him to what everyone has done for him. She will tell him how for 1,941 days people demanded his release at every highway intersection, every street corner, in the rain and heat, until they were told it was actually going to happen.
The members of his hometown will stand excitedly for him, but he won't be the same Gilad they knew before. Things have changed for him. He's not the same young boy in his tank unit uniform who used to leave the gates of Mitzpe Hila and return again on weekends - perhaps a bit dusty - to his family for the Sabbath. They will gaze at him and realize that he is truly home now. Many of them have said that over that the past few days they were not able to sleep at night. Others have said that this will be the first holiday in which the empty chair they kept for him at their tables will not, and will never again, be empty.
Some people gathered in small groups in their homes in Mitzpe Hila and couldn't stop shedding tears of joy. Some tried to pass the time with a tradition they began of marching up and down the road that leads to the Shalit family home.
Gilad will return after 1,941 days to the only place he has ever really called home. In Mitzpe Hila people talked on Monday about how much they want to hug him already, but not smother him with a bear hug. They asked each other how they should show their returning son the tremendous love they have felt for him throughout the past five years.
This is it. The flags will be folded up, the banners with the words "how good it is that you are home" will be taken down, the signs at the yellow entrance gate will be removed. Someone pointed out though that they should not be stored away, but destroyed. All of this will be replaced with a single boy with a bashful smile, who matured all at once, and who is returning now to the Galilee.
Gilad is returning to his mother's orchids and to a huge hug from everyone who has been waiting for him and wants to feel that he really is finally back with us. He will be here, and never again only in a photo.
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