In a Fog

Sometimes I go through my days in a bit of a fog.

I work hard.  Have lots of children to treat, parents to counsel, reports to write, staff to meet with.  It’s good work, it keeps me busy and focused.

With everything going on in my country, I try to check my phone occasionally for news. but the truth is I don’t always get to it.

And so sometimes I live my day thinking everything is okay, that we are back to normal, whatever that is in this tiny little country surrounded by a mass of people breathing fire down our already burdened backs.  And I like that feeling.

Today was such a day.  Busy at work. Afterward, running around trying to get the fixings for an early Thanksgiving dinner for Shabbat because it’s the first and last time in weeks that our whole family will be together.  Doctor’s appointment.  In and out of the car.  That darn beeping the car does with its ‘automatic gear fault’ or ‘catalytic converter fault’ signal that Oded the-best-mechanic-in-Israel told me to ignore, because it’s just not worth fixing, but makes me really, really nervous.  Picking up one daughter from the busstop.  Then picking up the other, and then the third because they just can’t seem to coordinate coming home at the same time and they all work and study and travel so hard and I just don’t have the heart to make them climb all those stairs to get home.

And so I didn’t know.  I just didn’t know.

Not only did I not know, when I heard about a security situation in Tel Aviv, I didn’t rush to find out was going on.

I didn’t want to know.  As long as I didn’t hear about it, my world was still the world I wanted to live in, the one where blood isn’t shed because of hatred, the one where normal is something I can live with.

But I can’t run away from it.  By the time I heard what happened in Tel Aviv, there was another one on the other side of the country. Which is only several kilometers away.  Because as I said, it’s a tiny country.

Five, today.  Murdered in cold blood.  Two in Tel Aviv, three in Gush Etzion.  Three Israeli citizens, one American student and a Palestinian. All human beings.

My bubble burst and it burst hard.

And I don’t know where to put myself or what to do.

And so I continue.  Wash some dishes.  Hang some laundry.  Make some stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce.  Call a client.  Play three games of backgammon with Isaac when he gets home.  Walk the dog. Taste the stuffing.  Taste it again. Maybe one more time.

Stay in the fog, I tell myself.  A little while longer.

It’s just to painful to come out.