I look at her and think:
She will speak Hebrew without an accent. (Will she speak English without an accent?)
She will brave the Israeli school system, something I haven't had the guts to do. (I teach English online instead!)
She will serve in the army.
She will some day look at me and realize that I don't speak Hebrew as well as her friends' moms do, that our apartment doesn't look like other kids' apartment, that the way we cook and eat is "weird."
She will go the US only as a visitor. She'll probably have those quirks that I notice in the Israeli kids of Americans... they speak very good English but get idioms wrong, they know about Thanksgiving but aren't sure when Christmas is...
What books will I read aloud to her? What books will she read to herself? Will she still wear nothing but pink (thanks, hand-me-downs) when she is four? How soon will she be riding the streets on Yom Kippur, and will I be brave enough to let her careen around by herself?
But mostly I look at her and think: how beautiful, how bright. Right now she's mine, mine and my husband's, sleeping peacefully on my chest and speaking only in grunts. I wonder what it will be like to parent as an immigrant, if this will make her less mine as she gets older, if she will feel like she's foreign to me. Or maybe she'll pull me along with her, the ultimate lesson in how to be Israeli...
(Perhaps this is an even more interesting question... am I really thinking of re-starting my blog now that I'm already juggling work (sadly, teaching online means that I don't get to take advantage of the wonderful Israeli maternity leave) and care of a three-week-old???)
