Running for cover under firelit skies

I stood by my community’s bonfire tonight, surrounded by friends who know the taste and weight of loss.

We sat together in too many shivas this year. This year? Or was it an eternity? I’m not sure. The night was mellow, even with countless kids running around and fires flaring and little orange flickers flying above us.

We mentioned the ones we lost to war, and held their memories together. Firelight and shared experiences and love drew a circle of grace, of connectedness, around us, alight like the glow stick a different friend helped me wrap around my wrist when the night was young.

It was a time out of time, a gift of sweetness.

An island of connection, and belonging, and peace.

Minutes later I was racing up seven flights of stairs to other friends’ safe room with my two younger children, because yet another siren — the third in as many days — caught us on our slow walk home. How grateful I am to be surrounded by so many wonderful people, I thought as I panted and forced my feet forward, so many friends, right here in my neighborhood. I have friends to give me glow sticks and friends to be mellow with and friends to take shelter with. And friends to hand me a bottle of cold water when I collapse, legs turned into jelly, onto their safe room’s floor.

“Yeah of course I’m okay, don’t worry,” said my eldest son when I called him once I caught my breath. He is out there, somewhere, with his friends, by a different bonfire. He lay in a ditch, he told me. Everyone is well, he told me. Bye, Ima, he said.

Earlier yet, on the way to our community bonfire, I ran into my neighbor’s son. Last year he was a school kid. And now — now a gun is strapped across his shoulder. He will finish basic training in a month and a half, he told me, smiling when I marveled at how grown up he had become.

“It’s scary to have your son graduate during a war,” my neighbor told me last summer. I watched his son tonight, and in my heart, prayed for his safety.

My son is 15 years old right now, and he is okay, of course he is, don’t worry Ima.

His enlistment no longer seems so far away.

Once the obligatory 10 minutes passed and we resumed our home-bound progress we ran into another friend who, like ourselves, had to take cover with her family on the way home from the bonfire. “Let’s race and see whose kids shower and get into PJs faster,” she offered, sparking immediate excitement amongst all the tired children. We raced, we tried, we lost — and I was grateful. Grateful to find a way back into the sweetness of small routines, of precious mundanity. Grateful for yet another friend to share this life with — this wonderful life, rich as it is in beauty and meaning, and yes, also madness, and mourning, and grief.

Tomorrow we will rise again, and go on living.

It is so precious, so unspeakably precious, to know that we won’t have to do it on our own.