My middle child, Meron, almost 5, had many questions about the Iran War today. But it’s a conversation that we had last week, a premonition for the war to come, that sticks to my mind.
It was mid- February when Meron saw the new bomb shelter being built near our community library. We live in the Negev Highlands, in a small community where new facilities are seldom built.
I picked him up after day care. His Fireman Sam backpack was sliding down his shoulder. Meron ran and then stopped and stared, riveted by the newly built concrete structure.
“Ema, what’s that building?”
“It’s a new bomb shelter.”
“Why?! But we don’t need bomb shelters anymore! The sirens are over! We haven’t had any for a long time.”
How do you explain to an almost five-year-old that things in our neck of the woods can change in an instant. That’s the Middle East.
And then today early in the morning when Meron was still sleeping, the war broke out again and the first rocket alert sounded. The US and Israel were partnering up to take out a very evil regime that makes a whole population of little kids in Israel wonder about the mechanics of war at too young of an age.
While my youngest, Golan, was very scared and didn’t leave my husband’s side for a second throughout that first day of war and my oldest, Carmel, was having a neverending tantrum, Meron’s questions didn’t stop.
“Ema, will the good guys win?”
“Do the good guys always win?”
“Do you know the guy who sends the rocket warnings to us?”
“Will a rocket fall on our house?”
“What’s a rocket made of?”
“Is a rocket bigger than me?”
“Is God watching over us?”
“Can we say a prayer for the pilots?”
And then my daughter, Carmel, stops crying and suddenly asks:
“Do the Iranians think that we are the bad guys?”
At some point in the afternoon, Meron falls asleep on me. After a few minutes, he wakes up startled.
“Ema, I heard the rocket siren.”
He starts running to the shelter.
“It’s OK Meron. There was no siren. It was just a bad dream. You can go back to sleep.”
Everytime there’s a rocket alert, Meron is the first to respond. He runs quickly and confidently to the safe room and the rest of us follow him.
While many rockets were fired at Israel today, leaving apartment buildings and the courtyard of a school heavily damaged, we have been fortunate. No lives lost today.
But our kids experience wars in ways that we can’t even begin to understand. They have more questions than we have answers.
Later on in the week, I take my kids for a short walk in the desert. We look at the bright little blossoms that temporarily color the vast Negev; purple, yellow, white flowers and my kids pick little bouquets to bring home.
During these walks, I pray for a peaceful future where our kids no longer need to ask questions about rockets and alarms. Where they don’t dream about rockets in the sky but about the flowers that grow in the sand. That they will know peace in their hearts and minds and the world outside.
