A Soldier’s Mother

It has been two months since I joined the ranks of IDF mothers, specifically combat mothers. I am still new, still training to be the supportive role I need to be while learning ropes I never thought I could climb. This tribute is for all the mothers who came before me, those who are on this road with me, and the ones who will follow. To you, I say: Happy Mother’s Day, my brave mothers-in-arms.

Becoming a soldier’s mother changes you.

Because to be a soldier’s mother is to become a rock with soft edges, a solid place to crash with a warm embrace.

To be a soldier’s mother is to wait all day for a two-minute call, never knowing if it will be before bedtime, nearly midnight, or not at all, so you sleep with one eye open and your ringer on.

To be a soldier’s mother is to smile on video chat as they pack their gear on Saturday, then hold your breath until Thursday, when they call for thirty seconds just to say they’ll be on the shuttle Friday, spending all week in suspense, imagining the hard ground beneath them, the desert sun above them, and the live fire exercises you hope they never need.

To be a soldier’s mother is to wrap your arms around their bruised, battered body, weighed down by a weapon and a bag filled with the grit and grime of grueling two weeks, while they present you with a bouquet of flowers they picked up because it is your birthday, and they are still your little girl who loves to make her mother smile.

To be a soldier’s mother is to lie in bed together and debrief for hours, filing abbreviated words in your adopted language into your overwhelmed brain, where you hope you can process them so that you don’t have to burden your soldier with teaching you while they are still learning, all while paying attention to details like names and ranks of the people they would take a bullet for while they protect their country.

To be a soldier’s mother is to feed them their favorite food, fill the house with snacks you never bought when they were growing up, and pander to their whims as they desperately suck in civilian air with a hunger you don’t recognize.

To be a soldier’s mother is to listen to them cry when they are tired and anxious, and still just eighteen and don’t want to go back to base tomorrow, so they crawl into your bed and wail about regretting their decisions while you stroke their hair and kiss their forehead and refrain from telling them that everything will be okay because you are no longer the expert in what will happen next.

To be a soldier’s mother is to get out the ice cream, put on a happy face, and tread carefully through a myriad of emotions you don’t recognize, but acknowledge with the love and acceptance you will yourself to display despite your exhaustion and the heaviness of it all.

To be a soldier’s mother is to wake up early on Mother’s Day and sit at a coffee shop with your beautiful little girl with her gun in her lap and her bag beneath the table and prep her for another two weeks away by flooding her heart with every piece of yours so she will know she can come home and fall apart in your arms again.

To be a soldier’s mother is to hug her goodbye and watch her square her shoulders as she strolls towards the teeming bus station, joining the crowd of mothers’ sons and daughters waiting to be shuttled back to base.

You walk home in pensive silence, the lonely ache in your soul adding to the fabric of a nation of mothers waiting for their children to come home.