BzH, change is on the horizon!
Not just because I’m 22 weeks pregnant with our next little boy, but also because we plan to adventure next year. Yes, with a newborn. Yes, with 6 kids (BzH). Yes, even though we live a pretty cushy and enjoyable life right here on the Sunshine Coast.
Pregnancy is a big transition time. It’s the prep time you need before the big change. And babies always are a big change. It’s perhaps a little rude to say that an entirely new person making their way earth side ISN’T a big change. Their life is big! Their life is worth celebrating and making space for! That doesn’t mean they have to tip everything upside down, that they’re hard, or that they’re chaotic. Big changes doesn’t have to mean big pains. Sometimes big changes can just mean big love, and big growth, and little adjustments.
But a new baby isn’t the only area we anticipate change with. My husband recently finished his masters of teaching and is now registered as a teacher. Exciting! This is a big change for our family and we’re looking at the possibility of doing country service, and moving somewhere else in our big ol’ state. It would be exciting! An adventure! A chance to save a good amount of money, and for Saadia to really get his feet wet teaching.
It’s not so simple for us as it is for other families.
One, we’re a BIG family these days, and finding housing could be difficult.
Two, we’re Orthodox Jews, and therefore have things we need to access regularly like kosher groceries, kosher meat deliveries (we would need to travel to only a couple of cities in the state periodically to collect our order), and access a Mikveh. Plus we probably don’t want to be alone for Chagim, so we would want the ability to travel somewhere and stay near other Jews for those times.
Three, we have older kids that won’t be happy in a place with nothing much to do, and no friends for a year or so. We need to find somewhere that at the very least is day drive distance to a “hub” of homeschoolers or at least other older kids and teens!
So it’s not so simple right?! And that’s becoming a little bit of a road block. But, still, there’s possibility and hope here and it feels like a medium level change.
And on the other hand we’re still contemplating and dreaming and yearing for Israel. For Aaliyah. For home. This has been on our mind for… years. SO. Many. Years. We actually made the decision to go with the specific Beth Din we did for our conversion because we knew they were well respected and the conversion was accepted in Israel. We’ve prepped the idea with the kids, and everyone is on board with getting eat kosher food easily, and be around other Jews (a novelty for us!). Not everyone is on board with the FOREVER aspect of it, but everyone could be on board with a year long trip.
Oh how we have been back and forward on the year long trip vs. making proper Aaliyah! Are we making our lives harder by just thinking of going for a year? Am I, and probably the kids, just scared of making a big huge mistake? Would this be a big huge (expensive) mistake? Would this be a dream come true?
How could I leave my parents and rob my younger kids of growing up with their grandparents living 200m from them, and popping in casually to see them most days.
But then on the other hand, how can I rob them of a RICHLY Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael? Of Jewish friends, not having to explain their culture, religion, holidays, clothes, and food requirements to everyone they meet. There are lots of things my kids miss out on here because they’re Jewish – parties, end of year celebrations, concerts etc. I could gift them this part of childhood they don’t get that so many people take for granted.
In talking about Aaliyah I have to be realistic about that fact that it’s around a 20K investment for our family to get return flights Brisbane – Tel Aviv, and that coming back to Australia to visit would also mean paying for accomodation, as we wouldn’t be able to all fit at my parent’s place or anything like that. So coming back to visit definitely isn’t a “once a year” thing, or honestly even a “once every 5 year things”. It’s my parents coming to visit us, and at some point they will get too old to do that. Plus, it’s a big cost of them to come also (or for us, should we pay for them so they can come more regularly). Making Aaliyah really does mean leaving Australia.
Last night we realised that either way really does mean leaving the Sunshine Coast. Forever probably. As soon as leave this house that we rent cheaply from my parents we would be super priced out this area.
So really I have no idea what 2027 will hold at this stage. But I do feel like even though I’m quite scared of any change (and it’s important to be honest with myself about this if I seek to move through it!), I feel that it is somehow our destiny. But how to prep kids (and ourselves!) for change we can sense is going to happen, but is still fuzzy. Like an old school TV coming into focus. There’s no colour, no defined shape. I just know it looks different.
Mostly I’ve been prepping the kids that SOMETHING is happening next year.
Sitting down with kids and having a big proper talk about things is good. Necessary. Important. Respectful. But sometimes it’s all the small subtle hints that help pave the way for the big announcement and the big change.
Let me use pregnancy as an example again. My big kids are 14, 12, 10, 6 & 2. We didn’t tell them I was pregnant again until 13 weeks – after I’d had an ultrasound and we felt confident things would be okay. I had a miscarriage before our youngest kid and all the big kids knew about it, and it was TOUGH on them (and on us!), and in the reflection time after that a few of them said they never wanted to know about any future miscarriage. So we took that on board and made sure we were at a lower risk point of the pregnancy before telling them. But we didn’t just tell them out of the blue. No.
Well before I was pregnant with this baby we’d been planting seeds. Telling kids “You know, we MIGHT have another baby one day. We’ll see what Hashem has planned for us”, “Ooh, look at that little random baby, so cute!”, “I feel like someone’s missing. Who’s missing” (disclaimer: This often occurs to me, and that’s when I’m sure there’s another soul waiting to join us at some point in the future), and “I wonder if we had another baby who would sit next to them in the car” (Queue arguments about who gets to sit next to non existent baby, because at the end of the day all my kids were absolutely BORN to be part of a big family. They are all completely in love and adore babies and little kids. Yes, even my teenage sons).
And so how am I prepping them for THIS 2027 big change? With the little things – “Remember when we went on that trip and went to Springsure? Wasn’t that cool to be out in Central Queensland? I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere like that?”, “Wouldn’t it be cool to live up north near Cairns and then go snorkeling on Sundays!”, “I’m so ready for an adventure!”. Or, “Imagine we could just go out for dinner tonight because there were so many kosher restaurants around!”, “Ooh, wouldn’t it be nice if you could take a dance class and then do the recital at the end because they won’t put it on Shabbat wherever we live in Israel”, “Remember when we got those cheap flights to Cyprus last time we were in Israel? I’d love to be able to get some bargain flights like that again!”.
2027, I’m not really ready for you, but I’m prepping for you anyway!