Missing Home (Article# 62) 11/1/2007

What can I say? By the time you read this I will have returned home and am enjoying being in nicer weather and being with my family. As usual, it is always nice to see people and have a chance to keep in touch with our friends, but it is definitely a tough thing on the family to be out for eleven days at a time.

I saw that Danny Block is now moving to modify his travel plans and wish him a refuah shleimah (complete recovery) from his P.E. episode. Thankfully, I do not have to travel as frequently as him and only end up missing 5 or 6 shabbatot a year. Even so, having to be away over the weekend is definitely the hardest part.

If the cost weren’t so prohibitive, I would even be willing to travel back and forth on Thursday and the following Sunday for each trip. While the flight is definitely long and boring, it would definitely be worth it in terms of being home to be with the kids on the only free day they have all week.

Because of the extended “time out for health” we had to take in the middle of the year, I had to essentially restart everything I was doing at work from scratch when I finally got back to working full time. I had also missed a lot of work and it took me quite some time to catch up on all the “office work” that had piled up, so much so that it wasn’t until just after the chagim that I felt comfortable that I was close to up to date.

So I am only just now getting back into a regular work routine and building a certain necessary momentum to setting up my overseas trips. I don’t know how people who travel every single week do it, I find myself missing a lot of the weekly interaction with the kids, seeing them (and sometimes, although rarely helping them) do their homework, helping Goldie get them ready for school and just dealing with their daily activities.

I know it is tough on Goldie as well. As I have said before, we have each traveled to the USA for at least a week for business purposes – so we both know what it is like to be the person left behind to be in a one parent house. It is lonely and depressing. Especially when in your mind’s eye (even though you know it to be untrue) you imagine that the other person is having a grand time partying the day away with no family responsibilities.

Life went on in the Katz household. My family went to my nephew’s Brit Milah without me. They spent Shabbat together and Goldie had to resort to a three hour visit to the park to distract the little ones and keep them busy.

Aliza and Batya stared doing youth groups this year. They have meetings one night a week and Shabbat afternoon. Of course, since they each wanted to be with their friends they are in two different organizations who meet at the exact same times in totally different neighborhoods.

They are each putting on shows as part of the opening month of the youth groups, and both girls will be performing (in their respective shows). The shows will be at the same time and somehow Goldie has to choose which child’s show to attend (poor Aliza – she is older and has been in many more productions than Batya and I am sure that she is gonna get the short end of the stick this time).

So Goldie had some respite for a little while from having all the kids around, but I am sure she will tell you that it is the little boys who are the hardest to keep busy and cope with.

I will be home for Shabbat this week and am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed. My next trip will probably be to London (for Shabbat of course) but it will be for less than a week total which should be easier to deal with. It will mark my first non USA trip (I hope to go to South Africa or Australia later this year) and I am looking forward to that as well.

I know that in a few short weeks we will begin to see many of our friends as they head to Israel for their Thanksgiving or winter break vacations. We hope to see you there.