Recently, my dad asked me if I could pull up all of our first day of school pictures through the years. We actually have them framed together in the house, but I haven’t presented them all in one place like this before. So here you are, dad. The days really are long when you have… Read More The End of an Era
August can be a really hard month as a parent in Israel. The country loves its children. And the country has a very high percentage of families who rely on two incomes. And yet, for some reason that I have yet to understand after 19 years, there are very few camp choices for kids in… Read More The Sussmans Take August
My Aliyah baby left the house today for life’s next stage. After graduating high school, it’s time for him to spread his wings a bit and enjoy learning further afield. He thinks, as the third child, that the change is no big deal to us. That we’ve done this already with two others and we… Read More And He’s Off
Everyone knows that Facebook doesn’t tell the whole story. Sometimes it tells half of it; sometimes it’s a third. But it’s rarely the whole picture. Two weeks ago was, to put it mildly, very crazy in our house. One kid had a basketball accident which required a trip to the emergency center, then a trip… Read More Fire at 51: A bit too much drama for my birthday
Yakir loves animals. And when I say loves, I mean LOVES. But we just aren’t interested in the expense or commitment of a dog. And I’m allergic to cats (well, and when you have them on the streets like rats, you don’t really think of a cat as a pet). So that left bunnies. Let’s… Read More Bob, the Girl Bunny and other surprises
Last night, we were sitting at the dinner table discussing that it would soon be Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and that there would be a siren at school tomorrow. My 12-year-old started thinking about the word siren. Here was our conversation. Z: “Are there different words for sirens in English? Like, do my cousins… Read More A Life With Sirens
These are three of my favorite words. ‘I don’t know.’ As an employed person and a mother of six, you might assume that I don’t use this phrase often. If you were to poll a group of 100 people, I believe that most of them would say that this phrase shows weakness. It shows that… Read More I Don’t Know
When my youngest son was born, I wrote a blog from the hospital that started something like this. “And just like that it’s over. And, yet, it’s just beginning.” I was thinking about those words this morning as we brought our oldest son to Givat HaTachmoshet (Ammunition Hill) to join the Israel Defense Forces. And… Read More Walking Away to His Future
My boys’ high school loves t-shirts. To be more accurate, the kids love collecting t-shirts, sweatshirts, and other clothing items with the name of their school, Sussya. But the items aren’t just sold in a school store for the taking; rather they are earned. The school is built around a four-year program of classroom and… Read More How I Became a Sussmaneet
“But we weren’t even very good,” my 13-year-old declared, rather sheepishly, today when I told him that we were going out for a celebration. It’s been two months, two months to the day I think, since my three younger children (and my husband) have been out of the yishuv. That’s a looooooong time to expect… Read More Yes, We Were Very Good
