Today I had a nice, relaxing day.

I spent the most of the day in bed, sleeping on and off after being really sick last night – the kids came up to see me, but I didn’t go downstairs until the mid afternoon.  While I was in bed, dd16 was preparing the birthday party for ds5.  (His birthday was before Pesach and though we had a couple of very minor family ‘celebrations’, dd wanted to do something special for him.)

Personally, I had no interest in having an official party for him – parties aren’t something that I especially enjoy, and I’ve had so much going on that I had absolutely no head space for this.  Actually, I didn’t even have head space for dd to do it and told her so.  But she wanted to do it – she told me that it’s his last (actually, his only) party in America and it should be special – and I reluctantly agreed.

She did a great job on the baseball themed party – from the invitations, which had a photo of ds5 in his baseball uniform, which she added a digital word bubble to inviting friends to his party along with a cute baseball themed poem inside, to the party games, pinata, and two birthday cakes she baked (baseballs, of course!).  Ds12 and his best friend led the games, and the eight boys along with ds5 (and our kids) had a great time.  Ds5 was loving it!

She really thought of every detail, down to matching themed signs and paper goods, and food!  She’ll make a great party planner.  She did a great job and I think it’s really special that ds5 has a sister and brother who care enough to plan and execute such a nice party for him.

After the party was over, I took dd16 with her friend to the pool of a friend for a short swim. From there, they walked directly to her evening appointment at her chiro (her last one, since she’s returning to Israel tomorrow), and I headed to the lake to sit and relax while I waited until it was time to pick her up.  When I approached my car to leave, someone who was at my talk at the conference was there, and on seeing that I was by myself, asked if I was bird watching! (During my workshop on burnout, I mentioned that I was planning this week to take some time for myself to go birdwatching one day either early in the morning or at dusk with an experienced friend.)  I don’t consider myself an especially public person, but it’s interesting how often situations like this happen; as someone at the conference who reads my blog said, she feels like she knows all our family!

Avivah

I told you when we brought dd16 home for Pesach, and I told you that it we made the decision to bring her home a short time before she actually got here, but I didn’t tell you why we brought her home.  After all, we’re not really the kind of family who flies a child back just to be home a short period of time at considerable expense, particularly since we told dd when discussing her attending the school she’s currently at that we wouldn’t bring her home until the end.  However, with our plans to move in place, there suddenly were a lot of factors that were dependent upon one another that we were trying to juggle.  As a result, there was a lot of pressure to make a decision without having the necessary details in place to make it.  So we brought her home for Pesach rather than at the end of the year, instead of waiting for details that weren’t speedy in forthcoming.

This is confusing to explain in writing since there were so many overlapping factors that were all being discussed in a very close period of time of about two weeks, but I’ll try to share some of the factors and hope it makes sense:

– We weren’t sure when in the summer we would be moving (this depends on when we sell our house, when we find a place to live, dh finding employment, and when there are available flights by the time we work all of the other things out!).  Her program ends at the end of June, and if we moved around that time, it wouldn’t make sense to pay for her to come back since we’d already be so close to arriving there.  But if we didn’t do that, then she wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye to her grandparents, friends, or have any kind of closure with her life here.

However, we didn’t want her to spend 10 months away from home, and then just as we moved there, for her to come here and be away from home even longer!  I considered different scenarios and realized that most of the other possibilities would mean she might spend another 4 months away from us; this wasn’t acceptable to us.

– We weren’t sure what her legal status would be.  If she opens her own file at the age of 17, she will be a returning minor, with similar rights to a new immigrant.  However, she doesn’t turn 17 until November.  That created some new questions.  Could she move with us and make aliyah on her birthday?  She is allowed to spend four months total (aside from time at an approved educational program) between the age of 13 – 17 to qualify for this.

But – we were told that if we moved before she turned 17, we might invalidate her status, and she’d have to live here in the US on her own for several months before coming by herself. Then we were told that because of the age she began her current educational program at, she wouldn’t receive any benefits at all.  Then we had to prepare to file a legal appeal on her behalf (which was scheduled for the day of her departure).

So despite calls to offices here and in Israel, we weren’t getting a clear answer on whether she could stay there with us without invalidating her immigration benefits.  (I’m trying to simplify this but there are actually a lot more details involved.)

– She’s been having stomach pains that we wanted to get checked out.  I found an osteopath covered by our insurance, but it takes 3 months to get an appointment.  Fortunately, dh had made an appointment for himself back in January, so he was able to give dd16 his appointment that ‘happened to be a couple of days after she arrived home, and made another one for himself in June.  We were instructed to do blood work for her, which we rushed to do before Pesach so we could get a follow-up appointment before her return flight.  This was complicated by the inefficiency of the doctor’s office, who told me they had the blood work results and would call us back with a priority appointment that day, but didn’t call us back for 5 days (after Pesach).  At that point, told me that the H pylori test, which was critical to her work-up, wasn’t processed because she was under 18 so we had to do it in a different format.

When I got this call, it was Wednesday afternoon, and she was scheduled to leave Monday night.  I had to drive to the hospital, pick up the new form to have another test done, and do that first thing Thursday morning.  It takes three days to process this test, and we were holding our breath if the results would get there in time for her appointment with the osteopath, which was for Monday at 11:30 am.  Dd was supposed to leave for the airport at 2 pm. I really didn’t want to wait until that visit to decide if she’d go back or not.

– Her dentist said she needed her wisdom teeth out, and the first appointment I got for a consultation with the oral surgeon was in mid-May.  The first appointment for the surgery was on June 20, and I was told she had to stay in the country for a week afterward.  That meant she would miss the rest of her school year.  So I was researching what would be involved in having it done in Israel, in addition to calling the office here several times to see if there was a cancellation we would have.

So there was a lot of stuff to juggle about deciding when to bring her home, and once we brought her home, we had even more things to consider.  After going back and forth about all of this, dd and I agreed that she’d stay through the end of May – dd really wanted to be here for the Torah Home Education Conference, and she’d be here another month to get the stomach stuff diagnosed, then have the wisdom teeth taken out in Israel so she’d be there for the last three weeks of school.

Then on Friday, I called the oral surgeon one more time – and I finally got a nice receptionist, who I explained the situation to.  She managed to find an appointment for the wisdom tooth removal in the last week of May.  I was so happy when I put down the phone!  Now we’d be able to do everything before the May 31 departure date!

However, on Monday, she had her appointment and all of her blood work came back negative.  We were all hoping it would come back positive for H pylori – both this doctor and the osteopath she saw in Israel were guessing that’s what it was (and initially this was my guess, too, though by the time she came home with no improvement after huge amounts of powerful probiotics, I was thinking it had to be something else).  But it didn’t.  Everything came back negative.  So the doctor recommended further testing, which would necessitate an appointment with a gastroenterologist and an abdominal ultrasound.

Now, I was in DC getting the passports done, and by the time I got home, it was too late to get an appointment with a gastroenterologist.  This left me with a real dilemma.  I had only a few hours left before her flight departed, and in order to get partial credit toward another ticket, I needed to cancel her ticket and reschedule a new ticket before her flight took off.

I didn’t know how long it would take to get the appointment with a gastro, then how long it would take to get back those test results, then how long to schedule a follow-up appointment.  So I called the airline a few minutes before the flight left, and they told me I could cancel the ticket then, and reschedule in the morning.  This was great because it gave a me a couple of hours Tuesday morning to figure out what to do.

The first thing Tuesday morning, I took dd14 to the dentist.  As soon as I got back, I put on a science dvd for the kids ages 10 and down (this is a very rare thing so they were excited), and though I didn’t do it with this intention, it gave me time to make the necessary calls without interruptions.  I called our pediatrician, who gave me a recommendation for a gastroenterologist, I called the gastro, who gave me an appointment for mid-May, I called the radiation clinic and asked how soon I could get an ultrasound, and then I called back the osteopath with referral requests.  (That was the hard part since they rarely answer the phone!)

Then I called the airline, and I was able to get dd’s return flight rescheduled for May 31.  (And it only cost me $546, including the change ticket fee – I hadn’t been counting on this extra expense when we brought dd16 home, and was told the night before it would be more, so this was a nice surprise!)

This is the end of the post relating to dd’s ticket rescheduling, but was just the beginning of my day.  It was 11:30 am by now, and as soon as I got off the phone with the airline, I rushed out to a meeting, getting there ten minutes late, and as soon as I got home from that, had to take ds17 to the Megabus stop to return to NY.

Dd16 had asked before I left for my meeting if we could have a picnic, so she prepared the food while I was out, so that we could go directly from the bus stop to the park.  But ds12 wasn’t in the van by when I needed to leave and time was so tight that I had to leave without him.  After dropping ds17 off (half an hour away), we decided to go back for him because a family picnic isn’t fun when you leave someone behind.

When we arrived home, ds12 had just left five minutes before to go to a friend, but dd14 was still there, who was supposed to babysit.  But the person hadn’t picked her up (they’d just had a baby), so we were able to take her with us, then go pick up ds12 from his friend.

Then we had our picnic and we actually had everyone with us (except dh and ds17, obviously).  It was very warm out but the park was breezy and so pleasant, and as I said before, at this busy time I’m really making the effort to build in relaxed time together so the kids don’t feel like all I ever do is run from here to there!  We left at 4:30 to get ds12 to his baseball game on time, but on our way home, ds12 showed me his sneakers that I bought him three months ago were close to having holes on the soles.  So I dropped everyone off at home, then we zoomed off to downtown to find him some sneakers before his game (I haven’t mentioned that baseball season began before Pesach, have I?  Three games a week, and no, I haven’t been too sad that many of them have been rained out. 🙂

Fortunately we found an amazing pair at the thrift store that he’s very pleased with ($10 for Nike sneaks with shock absorbers), and we got home just in time to get everyone into the van and go to his game.  (It was 6 pm by now.)  Dh came along, which was really nice, and at 7:30, we took dd16 and the littles home, leaving the older four kids there to be brought home with one of their two grandmothers.  Dh and I both had to be somewhere, so he dropped me off at my shiur and continued on to his meeting.  Usually I drop him off, but thanks to this change, I got to my shiur ten minutes early, giving me the first quiet time in the day! (I just got a book about intuition from the library and spent those ten minutes answering the preliminary questions.)

Then dh came to pick me up at 9:45, and I went to bed early (but unfortunately didn’t get to sleep until 2 am.)  Another busy (and as of late, typical!) day, but we got some important things taken care of, and after weeks of working out these details, and we’re all so glad to have it settled that dd16 will be home with us for another four weeks!  (And for those of you coming to the conference, you’ll have the chance to meet her, since she’ll be participating in the teen panel.)

Avivah

Today I took ds17 and dd16 to the interview that are part of their aliyah process.  (These two children have a different legal status than the others; none of the rest of us have to do this.)  Fortunately, the office we had to go to was only an hour away.  Unfortunately, when I got there I learned that an important part of our interviews was bringing original copies of the paperwork we had already faxed.  (They had sent me an email, but I accidentally deleted it before reading it and didn’t see that I was supposed to bring the originals.)

But in the end it didn’t matter so much, since the paperwork they most needed was proof that these two children haven’t lived in Israel between the ages of 13 and 17.  Since their passports expired before 2007 and we just got new passports a month ago, a gap exists that the passports wouldn’t have assisted in clarifying even if I had brought them with me.

I asked what else we could use to document their U.S. residency, and was told ‘school records’.  That doesn’t help me much, though!  I sent an email to the head of our umbrella program asking for her help in quickly getting a letter to me that states that we’ve been homeschooling in this state for years.  This is important for them both, but particularly important for dd16.   

Since dd16 attended the Naaleh /Elite Academy program sponsored by the Jewish Agency this year, we’re now being told she will lose all the aliyah benefits she would otherwise be entitled to as a ‘returning minor’.  When I first was told this, I was really upset.  It contradicted everything I had been led to believe, as well as common sense.  Apparently there was a little known technicality in the fine print of the law that someone born in Israel who attends this program before the age of 16 will have the time they are studying there applied to their residency in Israel, and this is what would cause someone to lose all potential benefits to them if they decided to return to Israel at a later age. 

In addition to contradicting their own written assertions on every website that discuss the time spent in the Naaleh program not affecting the residency status of a student, it also contradicts the target population – this program is geared to girls ages 14 and 9 months and up, and dd was one of the older girls in her grade – she began 11 weeks before she turned 16.  I told the Jewish Agency representative that it made no sense to market a program like this with the hope that teens will be inspired to make Israel their home at a later date and then to yank the rug out from under someone and tell them they lost all the benefits they could have enjoyed as a result of attending this program! 

I told the representative how upsetting this was, especially since I’m very unhappy with the program and if it weren’t for the fact that going to visit dd was the first step in the path to making the decision to move our family to Israel, I would strongly regret sending her since it wasn’t at all what we hoped it would be.  Had anyone said anything earlier on about this point, I could have made the choice to keep her home, or to send her after her birthday.   But no one knew about this technical detail, apparently. 

Fortunately, the Jewish Agency is going to file an appeal for dd16 to the higher ministry of something in Israel to try to get an exemption from this, since the shlicha agreed that the situation made no sense and was contrary to the goal of the Jewish Agency.  So the piece of paper documenting her schooling is proof of US residency and is critical to the appeal process. 

I’m sure that this frustration will end up being a very good thing, and I’m optimistic that dd will be granted an exemption.  In a different arena but on a related vein, three days ago we were told that the apartment (condo) that we own in Israel requires $20,000 of plumbing work – immediately.  That’s not a soothing thing to hear!  😛  When dh told me about it, he said it was obvious this was a good thing and we just had to wait and see how.  Two days later we were very grateful to learn that we have insurance that will cover it (since it was caused by poor construction on the part of the builder) and the issue that we’ve continually been paying for here and there will be remedied at the root.  

 Not only will our plumbing be repaired, but the neighbor above our apartment has also been having plumbing issues that affected our apartment, and we can share with them the information about the insurance coverage.  If they go ahead with their repairs, it will benefit us as well as them!  Isn’t that wonderful?! 

If the repair costs we had been quoted had been anywhere near reasonable, we would have just paid for it (once again!); it was because the costs were so high that dh made more calls and learned about the insurance.  So while sometimes things look negative, it helps me to remind myself that Hashem (G-d) does everything with my best interests in mind.  Intellectually we all know that everything is for the best – but emotionally stepping into a place of embracing that is a conscious and constant effort for me.   Sometimes it is obvious sooner and sometimes later, but just never know how something that looks negative will play out to be in your best interest.  

 There are a number of things in my life right now that aren’t immediately revealing the inherent positive, but I feel like I have to keep taking steps in the right direction and trusting that the path will open as I go along. 

Avivah

It’s been over a week now since we officially announced that our family will be moving to Israel this summer, and I’m so amazed and appreciative of the unilaterally positive response we’re getting!

I figured there would be some people who would be dubious or even negative about making a decision like this so quickly, when it might seem like all of the pieces aren’t yet in place.  But I’m hearing again and again, how wonderful it is that we’re doing this, how the person I’m speaking to wishes they could do the same thing, and they go on to tell us how happy we’re going to be living in Israel. 

This has been really nice for me, but it’s been more than nice for dh, who was more hesitant than I was about this decision.  Hearing so many people say how smart/wonderful they think it is is a real support!  Dh is now just as committed and positive about going as I am, and thanked me for propelling the family to make this move.

Here are some questions I’ve been asked:

– Where are you going? 

 To a city in the northern part of Israel called Karmiel.

– Why Karmiel? 

I felt based on my research from a distance that it would be a good fit for us religiously, and also be warm and relaxed.  Dd16 spent a Shabbos there after we had already decided to go, and told us she thinks it’s a great fit for our family and she thinks we’ll be very happy there. (On a side note, she told me the rabbi of the synagogue shared something I said his Shabbos morning talk without quoting me.  I asked her why she thought it was me, and after asking me if I had said a particular statement, she said as soon as she heard him say it, she was sure I was the anonymous person he was quoting!  Fortunately, it was something positive that he was impressed by.  🙂  Isn’t it funny that my daughter happened to be sitting there the week that he shared it?

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to learn that someone I’m friendly with had just returned from her pilot trip to that area , and her detailed feedback was very helpful in confirming our decision.  Before that, I felt like technically everything seemed like a good fit, but the intangible feeling of the community is what I really wanted to know about.  She was able to share that with me.  

We didn’t want to live in an Anglo enclave, since I think it’s important to learn the language and socially integrate.  The Anglo community is Karmiel is small but growing, and for us, this is a benefit since it’s nice to be involved in a community when it’s still small and everyone knows each other.  You have to work a lot harder to be involved communally in a large and established community.

– What will your husband do professionally? 

This is a good question that has a good answer, but I don’t yet know the answer!  Something that will offer him an opportunity to use his strengths in a positive environment where he will be well-compensated. 

– Why do you want to move to Israel? 

This is the hardest question to answer, because it’s really all about an intangible feeling.  I can’t point to anything materially that will be better than what I have here, though that’s certainly possible.  It’s really about the feeling in the air.  I want my kids to grow up with that. 

I met an Israeli couple when standing in line ordering shwarma a week ago, and they told me they were moving back this summer after living in the US for many years.  I asked why they were going back, and the not especially religious looking husband said, “Because when you wake up in the morning, you feel close to G-d in Heaven.” 

– Are you taking a lift?

No, though we might be able to buy some lift space from someone else to send along some seforim (religious books) and homeschooling materials.  Otherwise, it will be what we can fit into our suitcases.  It’s very freeing knowing that I can’t take most of what I have, and I’ve already given away tons of stuff.  Before Pesach (Passover) is an especially good time for this since it means lots less to clean around. 🙂

– Why are you moving now?

I’ve casually considered moving to Israel a number of times over the years, but dismissed it since it seemed unrealistic.  It seemed too costly (our family doesn’t qualify for any of the benefits for new immigrants), and family-wise, the message is generally to be very, very cautious when making a move with kids over the age of 10 or 12.  I realized that even though we have older kids, it’s actually the perfect time since dd16 and ds17 have graduated high school but not yet started college plans.  Dd14 is very enthusiastic about going.  Ds12 is the most resistant because he doesn’t want to leave his friends, but out of all of our children, he’s the one who has the personality best suited to making new friends and embracing new situations, so he’ll do fine.  The other 5 kids will be 10 and under, so it’s a much simpler transition at that point. 

As I continued thinking out different factors, I had a growing sense of clarity that this wasn’t a crazy idea, that it was something we could do, and should do.  The hardest part of this has been making the decision.  It meant being willing to leave my comfort zone and start all over, which can be an intimidating thought.  You know the objections that came to mind as I was working through the main points?  Little things like,  ‘But I don’t know where to buy in bulk or get good deals.’ 🙄

It reminded me of when I was trying to decide if I should stop working before my third child was born so I could be home full-time.  One of the nice perks at work (besides a salary and adult company) was that I got a nice hot lunch every day, and when fresh fruit was left over, I was often told to take it home for the kids.  So when I thought of not working, I thought, “I won’t be able to get the free fruit anymore!”  I know, it sounds absurd, right?   Sometimes it’s really the little things that we don’t want to let go of that hold us back, not the big things.  When I’m faced with decisions like this, I’ve learned to recognize when I’m afraid of ‘not having the fruit’, and that helps me get things back into perspective. 

I know I was asked other questions – what did I forget?  I’ll answer about our thoughts regarding homeschooling in Israel in it’s own post.  If there’s something else you want to know, go ahead and ask!

Avivah