It’s like life lit up in color since my family came home, after being in some kind of black-and-white world for a long time

Six months later…

I’M ready for school a whole half hour early, which means I have time for a full-on hot breakfast.

“I’ll drive you today,” Ima says, smiling at me and then turning back to the pan to flip the next pancake. She’s dressed up, a trendy outfit that Aunt Chana probably chose on one of their sisterly shopping trips. I’m secretly happy.

After all, it’s the first time I’m bringing her into school with me.

Tomorrow’s the last day of the school year; today is PBY’s annual exhibition. It’s a major event, there’s a schoolwide theme, and then each class receives a sub-theme and we have to create projects in groups. Posters, 3D models, whatever, and graded written reports too (of course).

We could choose whom to work with for the exhibition, and Tammy and I teamed up. We’d decided to take things to the next level — posters and models get boring after a while — and so we created a puppet show that would run every half hour throughout the exhibition. The soundtrack was prerecorded but we’d have to man the puppets. It was a 12-minute performance (12 minutes and 23 seconds, to be precise) so we’d have time to look around the rest of the exhibition as well, between shows.

My whole family had pitched in to help us prepare the puppet show — Abba and Yaakov put together the frame for the stage, Ima helped us make the curtains and the puppet costumes, and my little siblings cheered us on as we practiced over and over.

Just thinking about it makes me smile. It’s like life lit up in color since my family came home, after being in some kind of black-and-white world for a long time.