SKI WEEK

This County has 'ski week.' It is a week off of school where all the kids go skiing. Theoretically, anyway. I'm told it evolved here in Marin because so many affluent parents pulled their kids out of school during ski season and took them to the mountains, and the school district finally decided it made more sense to close for a week than have so many students fall behind and the lose all that school revenue. Maybe that's county-urban-legend--dunno. Just know that our kids get TWO winter breaks--the one everyone gets in December and this week in February.

But not Josh. Josh not only spends his breaks catching up on schoolwork and homework, this time he is also testing. There are batteries of tests he needs to take so he can be placed once we get to Israel, and so he can get services once we're there as well.

There's a fair amoung of guilt over this. I will always wonder if I did something that caused Josh's problems, and it doesn't really matter what doctors, educators, the Husband or anyone else says---there's always this nagging sense of responsiblity. I can't change it but I can always regret that he'll never ride a bicycle, never go skiing or snow-boarding, never drive a car, never play baseball or do so many of the things that other parents take for granted their teen boys will do, hair-raising though they are.

The Husband raised racing pigeons in junior high school along with his best friends. He said it gave him responsibility--he and his friends had to race home from school, exercise the birds, feed them, clean up their cages and on weekends, they raced them. He was all caught up in it, to the point where he didn't have time to 'hang out' and get into trouble. We talked about Josh when he was younger and wondered what would ground him. It turned out to be Judaism. "Judaism is Josh's pigeons," my husband once remarked. Josh loves being Jewish, loves the zemirot, the prayers, the traditions, growing up to be part of a minyan and being able to correct his less-knowledgable parents. I can only hope that as much as he embraces his faith, it continues to sustain him through the tough times to come.