I had seven minutes.
Seven minutes from the moment I could safely say all three of my children were asleep enough not to be woken by the siren.
Quietly closing the door to their room, I chopped the cabbage. Five minutes.
I threw spices onto the chicken. Zaatar, garlic, sage. Four minutes.
Into the oven with extra cloves of fresh garlic, kosher salt and a generous drizzle of olive oil. Two minutes.
Do I try to wipe down the counter before the siren? Is this too ambitious? Yes. But, of course, I do it anyway. One minute.
A quick glance to the baby monitor sitting next to the candlesticks. Success! Two kids in the bunk bed and one in the cot. The relief rushes through me, even more than on any other night when all three are snoozing soundly.
They won’t wake up from the noise thinking it’s a siren from an incoming missile. We won’t have the usual rush of hearing that familiar sound and scooping them up to shuffle quickly to the bomb shelter.
I talked about it that day to set expectations with my five-year-old. This would be a siren they don’t need to run from. This would be a siren during which they have to do the opposite. To stand still. She practiced standing with hands at her side.
“Why is there a siren?”
“To think,” I answered.
“What do I think about?”
“Remember when we came back from home from Australia and you were so happy to see the blue and white flags again? Think about that, honey.”
I rush out to the balcony in my pyjamas. The street sign, usually white, is covered in black. Like all the streets in town, it carries the name of a local hero who fell in defense of Israel.
Shauli.
Yaron.
Benji.
The town is an elaborate labyrinth of loss for a day.
And then the siren starts.
The siren is packed with such a molecular density of togetherness that it sets off an equal reaction. The tears flow as if I wasn’t chopping cabbage a minute before.
Since October 7th, the tears live right at the surface, on demand. It doesn’t take much to cry. For two minutes we are wrapped inside this atomic, chemical sense of belonging.
For seven years now I have been standing on that same balcony for the siren that pulls us headfirst into Yom Hazikaron. I see the elderly neighbor who always salutes with a shaky hand from his wheelchair. I see the woman who always takes her nervous dog down to the street. I see the steady stream of cars start to pull over to the side of the road to join the stillness.
And then it’s over.
Since October 7th, people seem to stay in their place and embrace each other more in the moments after the siren before continuing on in silence.
We stay in the quiet after the siren a few moments longer, as if we aren’t quite ready to keep going yet.
Discussion about this post
No posts