It was one of those delightful evenings when the biggest debates with my kids revolved around whether there should be seconds of strawberry ice cream (spoiler alert: there were), if we could squeeze in another round of Go Fish before bedtime (we totally did), and which story to read, King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub or Where the Wild Things Are (we ended up enjoying both).
Their hair was still damp from the shower, and their eyelids were starting to droop when suddenly, the siren blared.
No, this isn’t a drill. This is not a test.
We live in Israel, a place where the realities of conflict are never far away. Just an hour’s drive away lurks a terrorist organization intent on wreaking havoc, one that has been launching rockets at us for the past decade. The harsh truth is that anyone living here – whether Muslim, Christian, or Jew – is in the line of fire.
What’s wild is that just like I learned how to “Stop, Drop, and Roll” as a kid growing up in earthquake-prone California, my children know exactly what to do when those sirens wail in the night. They dashed to the door, grabbing their flip-flops – thank goodness for those inexpensive slip-on shoes! My daughter struggled a bit, so I scooped her up while my son and I made a hasty escape past the purple scarecrow they made “to keep the rockets away, Mama, so they don’t hurt us when we sleep,” and over the rocky terrain to a public bomb shelter.
Yes, you read that right: we have a public bomb shelter. Just like everyone else in Israel.
Bomb shelters dot the landscape, and air raid sirens and the Iron Dome – a system designed to intercept rockets before they reach homes – are part of our daily lives. Thank goodness for these measures, because as we were sprinting to safety, the ground literally shook beneath us.
“Red Alert! Red Alert!” my kids sang. “Hurry, hurry, hurry, because it’s dangerous. Hurry, hurry, hurry, to a safe area.”
So while I grew up singing “The Wheels on the Bus,” my kids belt out tunes about how to respond during a rocket attack.
“Breathe deep, it’s okay to laugh!” they chanted as we entered the shelter alongside other families.
The blast hit, and my daughter let out a scream that could rival any horror movie – the kind you hear when the monster emerges from under the bed. Those rockets are our monsters, and they’re coming for us.
Inside the shelter, what do we do? We munched on Pringles and sipped chocolate milk. We played Go Fish with our neighbors and prayed.
In Judaism, we say that when life gets intense, the first reaction is to cry, followed by anger, and finally, laughter. With our mouths wide open and all teeth showing, we laughed as our bodies trembled.
When the news came through on WhatsApp that a rocket had landed just a five-minute walk from where we had been enjoying our ice cream, we skipped the tears, bypassed the anger, and dove straight into laughter.
Honestly, what other choice do we have?
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