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For two years, there have been yellow ribbons tied around the trees on my street. There’s also a yellow ribbon sticker on my laptop and a magnet on the back of my car. Between the souvenirs on my fridge from Disney and Washington and Zion National Park are more yellow ribbons and small banners saying “Bring them Home” or “Let Them Go!”

And now, two years almost to the day that those ribbons went up, they’re going to come down. Hopefully.

The ribbons on the trees were the first to be hung in an explosion of community support and as a message to our families in Israel that we, too, are with them in both despair and hope. It was particularly personal on our block: my neighbor across the street tied his yellow ribbons around posters of his cousins, a father and two children, who had been kidnapped into Gaza on October 7th. The children were released during the first fragile ceasefire. The father’s picture stayed up on their tree for well over a year until he was finally released.

The other ribbons — the magnet on the car, the stickers on the fridge, the small lapel pins on the landyard I wear to work or the one I wear on my dress — those had a more organic compilation. Some came from prayer events, some from my trip to the south of Israel to witness firsthand the devastation and horrors of that day in October. One was handed to me by a released hostage who came to a solidarity march. Each one found its place until the yellow ribbons became ubiquitous and, in some way, tired. The shock of yellow when turning onto my street dulled as the months wore on, yellow pigment muddied by the elements and time, until we barely noticed them.

Symbolically, it seemed that we came to a place of acceptance, but that is far from the truth. As days turned to weeks and months and years, we still sported the ribbons, still wore tape numbering each day, still wore pendants of the State of Israel on our necklaces, and still hoped against hope. We kept signs up, though people tried to rip them down. We said their names. We set empty chairs at our tables.

And now, two years later, we will hopefully, finally take the ribbons down.

It’s a victory. A cause for celebration and parties. The end of this war is a blessing. An end to the torment, the waiting, and the daily reminders. But like those weathered sashes on my front lawn, we are damaged. So while I am taking down the ribbons, I am torn about their upcoming absence on the block, worried that in some way it will be a denial of the grief that has pervaded all of our lives these past two years. Taking down the ribbons may be emblematic of the end, but the weight of those years – of those ribbons – will linger heavily in the air and in my day-to-day for much longer.

I thought I would be excited to move on. But my mixed emotions at changing the decor that has been my daily view for two years remind me that the street I live on can’t just go back to before October 7th. The hostage signs may finally be taken down, the ribbons may be shelved, but we are exiting these two years differently.

We watched the world through new eyes. We learned how fragile the Jewish people’s place in this world is. We buried soldiers, friends, and family. We became one people yelling into the storm of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish voices, and realized how small and insignificant we are. We watched in shock as countries around the world took up the banner of terror and death, mocked our yellow ribbons and prayers, and flipped the script. The yellow ribbons became yellow stars, branding us not as bereaved kin and victims of terror, but perpetrators, Zionists, Jews, colonists — slurs hurled at us echoing with the vitriol of Nazi Germany.

The residue of the tape on my shirt marking the days of a hostage’s captivity, the indentation of the ribbon left in the trunk of the tree, the ribbon-shaped discoloration on my laptop remind me; the ribbons may be coming down, but there is no longer any illusion that we will blend in, assimilate, and continue our lives as if nothing happened. The speed at which reality unravelled and misguided hate exploded is seared onto us forever like a numbered tattoo on our souls.

It’s been two years. The ribbons are coming down.

Our hostages are coming home.

And the nation of Israel continues to survive.