So now the time has come, we can’t avoid it, the holidays are over, we have reached the time of “after the holidays.” For our youngest son it was not easy yesterday morning to have to return to his army base after spending a full 25 days (!) with us at home. But he’s quickly readjusted to everyday life again and is looking forward to coming home this afternoon, because the weekend is just around the corner. How good it is to have the Shabbat, a day of rest, every week even without holidays.
The days that our son spent with us finally gave us enough time to really reconnect. The typical weekends are not enough for this. We usually don’t see him much as he’s eager to meet up with friend, which is also important, or retreats to his room to just enjoy the peace and quiet, which I can also understand.
But now, thanks to the holidays, we were able to finally spend more time together. I even found myself joining a couple of evenings of playing FIFA on the Xbox with my son and his friends. In terms of play, I embarrassed myself quite a bit, but it was still a lot of fun. I’ve known his friends since primary school and I’m always amazed at how quickly they have all turned into young men. Our son attaches great importance to his friendships and I appreciate that, and am therefore prepared to see him a little less. Or to have the friends come to us, as was the case on Yom Kippur, when around 10 former schoolmates met in our garden. Some of them walked for a full hour to be there. That’s what I call true friendship.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t see our eldest son at all during the holidays, because after a year of Corona lockdowns, he and his fiancée have resumed the tradition of traveling abroad for the holidays. This time we went to the USA for a three-week tour of the Northeast, including Philadelphia, Washington and finally a few days in New York. A couple of wedding invitations have already been distributed to relatives of his fiancée. There are still a little more than two months until the wedding, but the seriousness of the situation is slowly becoming clear to me and I am beginning to imagine how my wife and I will lead him to the Chupa. The day before yesterday our son and his fiancée finally landed safely back in Israel. Fortunately, all the Corona tests they had to do were negative, so we are now looking forward to a weekend with the whole family.
The weather here is still quite summery, so we will probably meet in Tel Aviv and then go to the beach together. We haven’t been to the beach this summer, so we should take advantage of the good weather now until it really becomes autumnal.
