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Under the Same Moon

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I was taking my usual morning walk with the family dog in the fields in the Lower Galilee, where I moved with my family from Jerusalem this summer, when my cell phone rang. It was my 16-year-old daughter Michal calling. Michal does not live with us on Kibbutz Hannaton during the week. She decided to stay in Jerusalem to finish high school and only come up to Hannaton for Shabbat. When she told me that she did not want to join us on our adventure in the Galilee, I was heartbroken. Naively perhaps, I had assumed that she would be excited about the move. She loves nature, has an adventuresome spirit, and enjoys meeting new people and expanding her social circle. Yet she did not want to make the change.

In my excitement over our move, I had neglected to take into account some of Michal’s other qualities, like the fact that since she was a toddler she has had a hard time with transitions. We had to take her out of friends’ houses kicking and screaming when she went for play dates after pre-school. Or the fact that she had a difficult time finding a high school she liked and wanted to keep the one she had finally found—Sudbury Jerusalem, a unique “Democratic School” modeled after the Sudbury School in Massachusetts. Once we came to terms with Michal’s resistance to our move, my husband Jacob and I decided to give her our blessing and help her finish out her schooling in Jerusalem—even if it meant breaking up the family five days a week. After all, as Michal told us when we announced our move: “This is your dream, not mine.”

This arrangement has not been ideal for anyone involved, but Michal is learning something about responsibility, self-sufficiency, making the best of a less-than-ideal situation, and taking responsibility for her decisions; Jacob and I are learning a little earlier than we had expected to let our birds spread their wings; and Michal’s five siblings are learning that their big sister still loves them even if she is not part of their daily lives.

Of course, we still see Michael each Shabbat, and Michal and I speak on the phone at least once a day—usually more. We sometimes call each other just to say hello, or to “talk business” about technical matters like when we should pick her up at the bus stop or whether she can have friends come up with her for Shabbat. But most often, Michal calls with a crisis or a dilemma. We are very close. Always have been. I am blessed, thank God, with an oldest daughter who tells me everything! Her friends know to be careful what they tell her because they know I will also hear about it soon after.

This time is was boyfriend trouble. Not unusual. So we each talked as we walked, and by the time I reached our street and she reached her school, we had come up with a game plan. “I feel much better now, Imah,” she said. “Glad to be of help,” I answered. It felt good to be involved in her life from afar, even if I can’t be there in person.

Now that the big problem was solved, we could relax into our daily chat. “So how are you?” Michal asked me. I told her that I was fine, out walking the dog on that beautiful, balmy winter day. The fields were green from the rainy winter we had been having, but this day happened to be more like spring than winter.

“It’s beautiful here too,” Michal said. “I am walking to school now in flip flops!”

“And the sky is so clear. Not a cloud,” I added.

“Yes, the moon is still out,” she added.

“I noticed that too,” I said and looked up again at the sky to confirm my earlier observation. “I see it right now.”

“Me too,” Michal said, and I felt chills run down my spine. Here I was in the Galilee taking a walk out in the fields while talking to my teenage daughter who was walking to school in Jerusalem. Yet we were both looking up at the same moon. In fact, despite our separation for the majority of the week, we also both menstruate at the same time each month. Our connection, it seems, runs deeper than time and space.

Michal will always be my daughter. And I will try to be there for her when she needs me. But she is her own person, and she has her own life to lead. She knows we want her here with us all week long, but we know that as parents of a 16-year-old, we need to give her room to grow, even if that means growing apart from us. But knowing that we will always be walking under the same moon certainly helps give me the strength to send her off on the bus each week after Shabbat back to Jerusalem.