Yesterday began like any other day. We woke up, took Gavi to school, and set off for Hartman to engage in a day of study on “A Time for War, A Time for Peace.” Ironic, I know.
I came home early due to a migraine, and was just waiting for Daniel to return after the evening session with Rabbi Aaron Panken, the new President of Hebrew Union College. I had finally gotten all of the children to bed. He came home, walked into the bedroom, and began telling me about the session with Rabbi Panken when I heard a sound I’ll never forget. The siren. The missile siren. Going off in Jerusalem. I don’t remember jumping up out of bed or running into the children’s room; everything was happening so fast. I grabbed Yaeli and Gavi; Liz (our baby-sitter) took Noa, and along with Daniel all huddled in the small bathroom waiting for it to go off.
It was probably the longest 30 seconds of my life. Finally, it ended. We exited the bathroom and all got into mommy and daddy’s bed to talk about what had just happened. Gavi started first: “Mommy, what was that scary noise?” “It was a siren. Can you tell me other times you’ve heard a siren?” Luckily, Gavi LOVES firetrucks and all things emergency vehicles, so I tried to redirect his thoughts to something positive. How do you explain to a 3 year old what just happened? We had a whole conversation about “good sirens” and how it means help is coming. Then we talked about weather sirens, and that time in Peoria we had to sit in the bathroom because there was a weather siren going off.
This moment made me think about all of those families living down south who deal with this as a part of their daily, even hourly, reality. This was one siren – one. And here I was, struggling to figure out how to explain to my 3 year old what had happened without scaring him more than he already was. I had always read newspaper articles about the sirens going off many, many times in Southern Israel, but until I experienced it for myself, found that I never truly understood what life would be like if that were part of my everyday reality.
It was an eye-opening experience, one that will always remain with me. As we woke up this morning, pretty tired from Gavi waking up scared constantly throughout the night, Gavi said, “I hope the siren never goes off again.” I looked at him and said: “I couldn’t agree with you more. Now go get ready for school.”
The Siren
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