For several weeks, he doesn’t understand a word.

The class has been together for a year before this. They know each other — and Hebrew. He knows no one. It’s challenging for him. Excruciating for me.

I speak to the teachers — when I can. The school isn’t close by; he takes the school bus both ways, and every phone call to check in — in Hebrew! — takes all my courage.

His morahs are amazing, soft-spoken and kind, helpful and attentive. And still it’s agonizing, sending him out into a bewildering new world every morning.

His morah suggests more playdates, so I do it. None of his classmates live in our neighborhood, but I push on. Sometimes, it takes over an hour to collect him from a friend, stroller and toddler in tow.

But then I have a rare chance to go into the school in person, and I’m rewarded with the sight of my son throwing sentences in Hebrew. Joining games. Kids running over, asking when they can come play.

“He’s doing great!” the morahs enthuse.

At the beginning of the year, I told them how sociable he is, how he’d been the center of the action in his English-speaking gan. Now, they tell me, they see it, too.

Half a year later, we’re moving on, moving back.

I tell him about the move with my heart in my throat.

“Next year, I’m going to mechinah!” he informs me excitedly. “We’re going to be in the big boys building.”

“Actually,” I say, kneeling beside him. “Remember? We’re moving in the summer — to a new house. That means a new school, too.”

He looks at me wide-eyed. “But I won’t know any of the kids’ names,” he says, finally.

My heart breaks for my son who thrives on friendship like plants need sunlight.

I am tangled in guilt and grief. I did this to him once already; how can I do it again? When he’s finally learned the language, speaks Hebrew better than I can, adjusted to the culture, made friends?

I grope for the right words. He finds them first.

“So I’ll learn their names,” he says, with a beatific smile.

And I’m left, mouth agape. Is it really that simple?

“You gave him the gift of resilience,” my friends tell me. “He’s learned the skills of adapting. Built the muscle of making friends. He’ll be okay.”

I try to believe it.

It’s the last day of school. I’m up at six-thirty, wrapping gifts for teachers, preparing treats for the friends he might never see again. I write thank-you letters in laboring Hebrew for the last time.

We head out under the broiling Israeli sun, and I expect him to beg me to stay, like he does whenever I get to bring him to school. Instead, for the first time, he runs ahead. Grabs a worksheet and sits himself at a table, not even glancing back.

I hear kids calling his name, and there he is, my social butterfly, chattering in Hebrew almost too fast for me to follow, laughing with his friends. My son who, in one year, learned a new language, a new set of rules, a new social circle. There is so much, so much he will be leaving behind, friends and school and the language he’ll surely forget, but also, I realize, there is so much he is taking along.

I step back into the sunshine, laughing through the tears or maybe crying behind the smile, because finally, I’m not just hearing it, I know it.

He’s starting a new school this week, and I know—

He’ll be okay.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 958)