Note to Self: Distance Affects Perspective

Finding comfort in reassuring our oldest granddaughter (10) that her father is in northern Israel. Cause for concern is containable, in a manner of speaking. Then her dad comes home for a three-day course in central Israel. He returns to his army unit trained to operate drones. He comes home again Friday. At dinner, he reports to adults: tunnels, shafts, deserted, destroyed Hezbollah villages in southern Lebanon.

Babysitting for our youngest granddaughter (2-1/2) Wednesday evening, I faced reassuring her there was no alarm, that if there were, we would go to her bedroom, the safe room. She probably heard alarms in her head from crying that she didn’t want her parents to leave and didn’t want to eat her dinner. That was resolved by YouTube and a pacifier. When I got to a video teaching you to tie your shoes, her 7-year-old sister warned me it wasn’t age-appropriate. Hardly porno. No war scenes. My quizzical expression elicited an immediate explanation: she only needs to learn to tie her shoes in first grade. Timely comic relief.

Earlier that day, in my office near Tel Hashomer hospital, I heard helicopters. It’s not far from the airport. In ordinary times, you might hear planes. These are not ordinary times. Helicopters. My first thought – injured soldiers arriving from Gaza or Lebanon. Last time I had an outpatient clinic appointment at Meir Hospital closer to home, an advance text message, suggesting using public transportation. Part of the hospital parking lot is repurposed as a landing for helicopters bringing injured IDF soldiers.

As I write, news items emerging, with the Censor only allowing our imaginations to wander. Internal instructions to my mind: Exhale slowly. Still not calmed from the air raid siren that woke us at 2:17 when I grabbed our phones for updates, asking Haim to close the safe room’s iron window. The booms. The adjacent Arab village where we often go on Saturdays was hit. In the morning, we texted three people whose businesses we frequent, inquiring about their wellbeing.

Thursday, I had a dentist’s appointment. Confident all was fine, I still wondered what happens if the dentist is drilling and there’s an air raid siren. Concerns of the privileged. On the other hand, what can be done about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza? Whatever responsibility different media sources attribute to Israel or not, doesn’t change the fact – there is a problem. Israel is part of the problem. Is Israel part of the solution?  How much time do innocent civilians in southern Lebanon really get to evacuate upon notice that their locale will be bombed? Less time than I am told? Is the air strike imperative? Will it prevent the next attack on northern Israel? My safety over theirs? Is there a strategy?

Pondering in central Israel. Worried about Israeli society, relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinians under occupation, Jews who see it all so differently. With surprise, I have asked people calling from abroad, choking back tears, worried about me, why they are crying. Because they love me. I worry there is something I am missing. Or it’s just a reminder that distance affects perspective.

Leaving the dentist’s office, the first headlines on my phone about four, then more, fatally injured individuals in northern Israel, in Metulla, on Israel’s border with Lebanon. One of my closest friends, since October 7, 2023, has volunteered incessantly, 85% of the time in agriculture, first in the area adjacent to Gaza, more recently in Metulla. I called. She answered, unaware of the latest news. Leaning on a streetlight, I choked my tears. Relieved. Sad. Someone else would call a loved one and not be answered. There it is. Distant from Metulla.

Frenzied over how we wash the breakfast dishes, over what truly matters in my life when evacuees in Lebanon will get the rains forecasted before northern Israel, and Gazans scramble for rations. Soldiers sustaining and containing tensions. Children – anxieties, fears, and unquantifiable trauma. Their experiences, throughout this region, pierce my heart as I drink my coffee.

-Harriet Gimpel, November 2, 2024