“Home is the place,” goes the famous lines from Robert Frost’s The Death of the Hired Man,  “where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”

Lines to think about for sure.

My story, in the context of Frost’s poem, centers on Sergei, Natalyia, and their 6-year-old son Misha. Sergei and Natalyia hale from Russia, though they emigrated to Israel over ten years ago for what they hoped would be a better life. Misha was born a while back, and the couple decided to return to Russia soon after his birth for what they hoped would be a better culture to raise a family. But the young couple ─ Sergei’s a precision metal worker and Natalyia is a trained pianist ─ discovered that the new Russia was no longer part of their culture and so they returned to Israel in 2007.

January 2009. A little over a year later, the three of them end up as refugees, strangers on our doorstep, looking for refuge. The war in Gaza has started. Ashdod, where Sergei, Ntalyia, and Misha live, is getting hit with missiles. The three flee, leaving jobs, toys, clothes, appliances, food, everything, in the effort to find comfort and safety.

And so here are these three strangers, feeling the intense humiliation of asking help from people they don’t know balanced by an even stronger intense drive to survive, moving in to my study in the ground floor of our house in Tel Aviv one Sunday night. My wife and I try to lighten the mood by cracking a few jokes, saying by word and body language that this too shall pass and it will all be good eventually. Sergei’s face is ashen, tense. I think to myself, I hope to god I never scrape bottom like this. I am so wrong.

Our dog Funny cozies up to Misha, and the two quickly become friends. Funny has been lacking love and affection since the kids started school. Misha seems to be looking for a companion that transcends the barriers of language. Once Misha gets comfortable, everything else starts to get more relaxed. Sergei begins to talk about trying to find his niche somewhere, caught between cultures that are foreign to him. Natalyia also seems to relax, though that’s more woman’s talk which my wife seems privy to and not me.

As it turns out, these three have become a gift to me and my family, in ways it may take a lifetime to sort out. My kids seem suddenly grateful for things they took for granted. Same for me. I think back to the beginnings of the economic crisis still very much facing us today, and my worries about paying bills here and managing expenses there, and the seemingly countless nights when I stared at the clock at 3 am wondering what will happen. All of a sudden, I don’t seem to be obsessing about all these details.

When I talk about our now extended family ─ which isn’t all that often ─ I refer to the fact that we have “refugees” in our house. The funny thing is, it’s not Sergei and Natalyia, and Misha who are finding refuge. It’s actually my family and I.

Home is indeed the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you. How many of us can identify such a place? Moreover, how many of us see the refuge provided by those ostensibly seeking succor from us? Something to reflect upon in the days ahead.