The things I love about coming home after being away are: eating my own home-cooked food, sleeping in our comfortable bed, getting back into a “normal” routine, and, well, that’s about it! The things I don’t enjoy are: catching up with mounds of endless laundry, sifting through piles of snail mail, getting re-acclimatized to the weather and time zone, getting back to a “normal” routine. It takes about a week to return to our regular schedule.

When I picked up the mail from the post office, it was mostly junk. I shook out the correspondence to make sure nothing was stuck and thrown out accidentally and I found an official looking envelope from a university. I walked into the kitchen and the message light was blinking on our answering machine with a voicemail from an Israel program. While away we had respite from some stresses to which we now returned in full swing: the continuation of the college and Israel application process. Though twelfth grade is a fun and exciting year for students, it is also an uncertain time filled with applying, waiting and making decisions.

Some of the choices my daughter and her friends are making were moot for most of my cronies and me in the same milieu a generation ago. Although I attended a modern orthodox day school similar to where my kids went, it was clearly a different time. Today it is expected that seniors should seriously explore the option of spending a year in Israel. There is both school and peer pressure to attend Israel night, make an appointment to speak with the Israel guidance counselor and submit applications (sometimes regardless of what parents may think about it, though they will surely be paying the hefty financial and emotional price).