CHAPTER 20: A NEW LIFE

And so I started a whole new life again with a new wife, a new house and a new life style. Anita and I had always traveled a lot and the same was true of Vera and her previous husband. Now it seemed we were doubling the amount of travel we were going to do. We immediately made plans for a trip to Israel for the Bar Mitzva of Vera's oldest grandson. We combined it with travel through Europe where both Vera and I have family. It was delightful. I met nearly all her very extensive family (she is one of twelve cousins!) and she met mine. In Israel we each got acquainted with each other's family. It was all very exciting and also very confusing but it was wonderful, especially for me, to finally have a large family, for the first time since the Holocaust. When we returned home we started planning for future trips. We both wanted to see as much of the world as we could manage. The only way this was possible was by making a yearly travel plan. We planned our trips for the following five years, put each year's plan on a piece of note paper and hung the five notes on our refrigerator door.

Vera & me, October 1995.

I do not want to go into all the details of our journeys. Suffice it to know that we made first a five year plan of travels. As I am writing this, we have almost completed these five years and we have stuck nearly completely to our schedule. Now we have already added two more years to our travel plans. Our life has been very exciting and busy. We have a very active social life. It seems that there are never enough hours in a day. We also are very happy and have grown very close. We both went through similar, traumatic experiences and now we want to enjoy life to the fullest. We work very hard at achieving that goal and pray that we will have many more years of good health and strength and that we will continue to have the love and support of our children.