I am so glad to have my boy home.

I sent him to Israel on his own for two weeks.

I KNOW. 

I mean, fine, if you are going to get technical, he wasn’t exactly on his own. He was there with his Saba and Safta and many aunts and uncles and and all of his cousins on his daddy’s side. Oh. And his daddy was there too. To me, of course, since *I* was not there, it’s considered a solo trip.

It’s unsettling, that feeling of having one of your children halfway across the globe.

It’s like having your arm amputated. The one that you actually use for writing. 

And then something hilarious happens or you have a question about something super boy-related and you look around for your middle-born and he’s nowhere to be found. And then you remember that he’s off eating street shawarma and hiking in bat caves and climbing Masada at 4am and floating in the dead sea and beaching in Tel Aviv and doing something on a Jeep.

Of course, I am only assuming he did all of these things. He was way too busy having way too much fun to stop and talk to me or skype with me to actually tell about all of these things, so I just have to assume that the poor-quality Blackberry photos posted hastily on Facebook were true, and that my son really did eat his first shawarma.

(Is it real? The world may never know!)

BOYS.

My girls would have never stopped talking. I would have gotten play-by-plays of every single moment. I would have known what every single cousin ate that day and wore that day and I would know every single detail of every conversation.

My boy, instead, says this upon arrival with a giant, heavy shrug. “I don’t know. It was great.” Which, in Josh-speak means, Why are you asking me so many tough questions Mama? I’m hungry. Can we have pizza?

And from this, we learn something very important.

Obviously, he’s never allowed to travel without me again.