Yesterday I drove my seventeen year old son to the bus station. He returned to his yeshiva, this time as a dorming student. Today I’ll take my nineteen year old daughter to the bus station as she moves out and begins a new job in Jerusalem. My husband will be going back to the office in a couple of days. (My twenty-one year old son studies at a very large yeshiva which hasn’t yet reopened so he’s still home.)

It’s been two months with everyone home – my husband and eight of our children – and this time has been incredibly precious to me.

Even when everyone else in the family was home together, my husband was always working and missing out. Now he’s been working from home and has been with us throughout the day, something he and I have dreamed of. It’s literally our ideal life.

Though I’d have preferred to have my three year old at home, as a foster child that option wasn’t available. Thanks to this situation, he’s been home for the last two months and won’t have to go back to school until the beginning of the school year. That’s a six month long reprieve for him and he’s thriving.

All of my children above the age of 10 except for one actively opposed moving. They really, really, really didn’t want to move. They loved living in RBS, they had friends and connections and a sense of belonging. My older three kids expected to be sporadic visitors with no sense of meaningful connection in our new community.

This was a move that none of them saw as benefiting them in any way. It would only make their lives more difficult, as two of our kids living at home would have to find somewhere else to live once we moved, and it would be a long trip whenever they came back home for a visit. A visit to a place where they didn’t want to be, didn’t belong and didn’t connect with.

Covid-19 changed everything for us.

First of all, I didn’t take anyone away from the life they loved by moving here. Corona regulations had already taken it all away before we moved. They couldn’t spend time with friends or participate in any of the activities they enjoyed. They couldn’t even go outside for a walk.

Moving became a solution rather than a problem.

We moved at the most beautiful time of year, with the most perfect weather, to the most beautiful part of the country. Even at the times with the most restrictions, we could be outside in our large yard and the younger kids could play in the fields next to the house.

There was so much to do once we moved, and that work was shared by everyone. This made our move so, so, so much easier, and also created a sense of involvement and connection to our new home.

Synagogues were closed when we moved and people were staying to themselves. My 21 year old son organized a minyan (prayer service) three times a day that met the quarantine guidelines – four of our family members prayed in our backyard, our next door neighbor prayed in his back yard, and the men in the two houses behind us prayed from their front yards and porches – everyone in their own space and at the same time, everyone together.

These were all people who usually would pray in different synagogues and not have mutual meeting points. Our older boys and my husband had a chance to meet neighbors they would have hardly seen otherwise. As the restrictions eased, the rest of us have gotten to know our immediate neighbors, too. It’s been over twenty years since I felt this connected to my neighbors – ironic, at a time of social distancing to feel so connected, isn’t it?

As a family, we have never had the level of relaxed connection and time together that we experienced during the last two months. Not even when I was homeschooling nine children at once. The time together was enhanced by the fact that there was nowhere else to be. This allowed everyone to relax and be present in the moment, without the urgency of needing/wanting to be somewhere else. It was a rare opportunity to us all to experience this inner quiet simultaneously for an extended period.

What do our children think about us moving now? Everything has been so much better than any of us expected. They not only like it a lot, but think it was a great decision to move here! That’s pretty amazing considering their feelings before we came.

In the last few weeks things have gradually been reopening and that’s a good thing. That’s a very, very good thing.

At the same time, I feel so wistful and almost sad that this time is ending. This has been an incredibly valuable and beautiful time that could not have been more perfectly scripted for our family. I hope we can find ways to continue to create this feeling as the busyness of life resumes.

As our older kids are starting to move out, it’s a comfort that this new place has become a place where they belong, a home where they’ll want to come back to.

Avivah