Awestruck

We don't make it easy on our kids. We say we are, and we mean to, but we don't. We do what we feel is best, and then we try to protect our kids from the fallout that occurs, but we definitely don't make it easy.

Last night, one of those kids graduated from elementary school. Our middlest, who we always thought would have the easiest adjustment to life in Israel, actually had the hardest time getting used to this place.

When we first arrived he was stymied by the language, and always seemed to be a step behind socially. He struggled in school, and though he has read thousands of pages in English books, he has rarely picked up a hebrew book for pleasure, and then, always under duress.

But he persevered. He watched TV in hebrew, and paid attention in class, and get fighting to gain proficiency in hebrew and in school. We worked with his teachers, deciding which classes were worth his effort, and which classes he didn't need to pay attention to. And after two years of ignoring history, geography, and the other lesser subjects, he was ready to jump all the way in.

His hebrew is flawless, his grades at the top of his class. He served on the student council, ran for an elected position and won, edited the school paper and his year book and sang in the school choir. Last night, at graduation, he sang and played guitar, performed in the class production, and proudly walked across the stage to get his diploma.

True, he isn't the most popular kid in his class, but he has a few close friends, both English and Hebrew speakers. He enjoys nature and origami and playing guitar and helping others and, of course, sitting quietly in a corner in the house and reading books.

He was the one who always made me wonder if we made the wrong decision to move. If he had stayed in Detroit, with his friends from birth, in an English environment, who knows how his second, third and fourth grades would have turned out.

But we didn't. And we didn't make it easy on him.

So he did it all anyway.