I was watching the long rows of refugees from Gaza city trudging down south to an uncertain future,  carrying all they own. 

Then I remembered.  My parents were refugees.  They managed to get out of the international city of Danzig where they had been refugees from Lithuania for 4 years – and arrived in England the night before Hitler’s invasion of Poland.  Their visas were temporary, and from the moment they arrived, their sponsors were looking for a way to get them out of England.  That’s why I grew up in America. 

But my parents never would have been able to return to their homes.  The whole neighborhood was bulldozed. We found new homes in America, and I never thought of myself as a refugees.  Even though the only clothes I had were in a tiny bag, and what I wore was a jumpsuit made down from British army blankets. 

I hope these people have intact homes to go back to when this is over.  But I have said goodbye to a number of homes and entered bare rooms and started over again and again, and apart from a few neuroses, managed.