Israel, Yom Hatzmaout
Today when my child called frantic, shrieking and weeping
I died a thousand deaths and my heart broke
She cried and all I could get they were sprayed and some beaten
Images of October 7, that’s what my brain’d evoked.
I was powerless and paralyzed with fear;
Her voice on the phone being my only link.
She was there, in the chaos, afraid, I was here
Unable to run, to help, to do, and only horrors to think
It lasted for an hour, a single longest hour of my life,
They were scared and finally whisked on the buses away.
If I had any hair it certainly would have turned white
Never again I want to live through this one horrible day.
***
The phone rang at 11 AM. In the nutshell aggressive teenagers in Tiveria and their older siblings turned the fun of the holiday and celebration into something horrible. They called my daughter’s group of kids white trash and pepper sprayed them. A few kids were also roughened up. When your child calls you and is seemingly under attack - I have aged at least five years in that hour. It was far, far worse than finding out I had cancer. She could not make it to her bus right away and when I heard “I saw people dying” I thought my heart stopped. It turned out to be “crying” not dying later but at that moment… the feeling of absolute powerlessness, being at mercy don’t even know what and who. I don’t know how I did go through my full schedule and through my day. My biller felt my daughter was egoistic and should have been more careful. BS, yes she is 14 but they are still kids. Who should she call but not her only parent - me. I am not an artist but we express our feelings in different ways. I am really bad at drawing but that dark with red splotches it what was in my eyes when I had that back and forth calling between 11 and noon. I have said many times that I believe in fate. My family and I manage to find ourselves in the midst of events more often than not. I was almost in the center of the earthquake in 1994 (but so were many of my friends), I passed the Pentagon 15 minutes before 9-11, we were 1 mile away from Lahaina during the fires and now this. I just hope that we will be like Leland Van Lew in “Along Came Polly” where everything ends well despite the odds. I can also live through many turns of fate but really don’t want my children to have this kinds of spikes and hurricanes of fate. I sat down in the evening, drew the tiny canvas and then felt hot tears go down my cheeks. It does not happen very often.
My daughter is shaken up but hopefully OK. She did get pepper spray in her mouth and in her eye. She rinsed it out and did not need to be taken to the hospital. It still hurts. I was joking that a small dose of reality would not hurt when she complained about bad food and mold on the pillow but I never thought of reality overdose.
And me… I will live.
🙏