My parents split up when I was nine years old. Shortly after the split, my mother became frum, and my sibling and I did with her. I was enrolled in a yeshiva for the first two years but it became apparent that this wasn’t the right school for me (many Russian kids, of whom the vast majority were not frum). My mother had some difficulty finding a place for us, but she did find one.
In high school, my mother became disabled and could not work. My father would not provide the money for us to go to Yeshiva. Now, I despised my high school — it was clearly not the right school for me hashkafically — but this much credit I must give them — they kept me in the school for years without my mother paying one dime, because she was simply not able to. For that, I have hakaras hatov to them, despite my overall feelings about the school.
The Wolf