Avi is coming home today

Yesterday was a very difficult day for Marsha and me. At about 5 pm Marsha got a call from the Tikva director at ROA and she told Marsha that Avi had some more behavior issues today and that we would have to take him home at this point. Understandably, they have concerns with safety issues and they are not set up to give Avi one on one support.

At first I think I felt anger. Anger towards the camp, anger towards Avi. And then you realize that it is less anger than disappointment. We really felt that this would be a good place for Avi for the two weeks. He has moved well beyond the behaviors that he was displaying and we will work with his therapist in the next sessions to try and figure out what was going on. For now, Avi will be on a flight out of Denver later this afternoon and I will pick him up this evening in Newark. The next week will be complicated as we had planned our schedule based on him not being here, but we will get through; what other choice do we have.

Or course we (and others) are asking the question “should we have sent Avi in the first place?” Perhaps he was not ready to be away, maybe we should have tried something closer to home, etc. I honestly do not think it was a mistake. I know that Avi had some positive times at camp and he had fun. He challenged himself to do things that he never did before, and never thought he would do. The other day when the group went horseback riding, he would not participate. I knew this would happen as I knew that he had some sort of fear or dislike of horses. On Tuesday, they went on their Massa (I believe this word is from a word for test, where the trip is testing their abilities). The group went on horseback to the edge of the ranch and camped out, including cooking their own dinner and breakfast, playing games and having a campfire. Avi was allowed to go by mountain bike with one of his counselors. Well, yesterday morning he decided that he wanted to go back to base camp on horseback. They radioed back to camp and another horse was brought up for him. That was an amazing accomplishment which truly validates the use of the word Massa for these trips. So were we right in trying this? I say yes, because despite the problems, there were positives and Avi did grow for being there.

I am reminded of the line in Batman Begins (and the other Batman movies): “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” This week was another trial for Avi and for us, and although we “fell”, we will pick ourselves up and move on, and in the end be better for having fallen.