I could just bust!

I am so proud of my lovely and talented wife!

Since we moved here, she has quietly worked behind the scenes, nurturing existing relationships with her design clients back in the U.S., and cultivating new free-lance design opportunities here (all while acting as mother hen to an unruly brood).

Throughout her pregnancy… even during labor pains… when she could have been enriching herself with extra ulpan classes, tiyulim (day-trips), and socializing, she continued to spend her time and talents to create a better present (and future), for our family.

Even though she is a kick-ass designer with scads of high-profile, international design work/clientele in her portfolio, in recent years she has taken the safe road – the one which would allow her to stay closer to home, and maintain hours more conducive to routined family life.

Watching her apply her considerable talents to more ‘mundane’ design work is frustrating for me. It's like watching a Ferrari pulling a trailer up a hill, or seeing a jet fighter being used for crop dusting. She never complains… but I know that she has been secretly ‘chomping-at-the-bit’ for some design-related work to make her soul sing the way it did when she was a passionate, idealistic Fine Arts student.

Well, yesterday Zahava was given the opportunity to spread her wings a little bit. She was offered a position in an undergraduate college in Jerusalem, teaching Graphic Design!

She’s not exactly unhitching the trailer from the Ferrari or taking the fighter jet out for aerobatics… but she is going to have the opportunity to bring her burning passion for design to a group of equally passionate young artists. In her new role she will get to speak in absolutes, and demonstrate ideals, instead of having to compromise because some client doesn’t have the budget (or the design sense) to let her 'do the right thing’ for a project.

The new hours will still allow her to be the 'mother hen' that she wants to be. But the intellectual/artistic stimulation of this teaching position will (hopefully) give her the opportunity to stretch her wings and soar to the heights of her full potential.

Congratulations sweetie… I couldn’t be prouder!