It wasn’t the way I hoped the weekend would end.
My son Danny, who is 28 and on the autism spectrum, was home, and we had a good time last Saturday, going to synagogue, visiting friends, listening to music, and watching a movie. I never turn on the news on television in front of him – it just stresses him out, and for what? -- but I was checking the headlines on my phone, as was everyone in Israel on April 13.
Still, although it was announced that Iran had launched an attack and various kinds of missiles were headed toward Israel, I maintained a resounding denial. I was confident or told myself I was sure, that we would go to sleep and wake up at the usual time on Sunday morning so we could head back to the village where Danny lives in time for him to eat breakfast with his friends and go to the carpentry workshop he loves.
After all, I told myself, we live in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem has been spared the worst onslaughts of missiles from Hamas because – according to conventional wisdom -- no Muslim-majority country or terror group wants to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque.
I had so convinced myself that this was true that I dreamed for a few minutes in the early morning hours of April 14 that the children who live upstairs were dropping toys on the floor, something they do occasionally but never in the middle of the night.
I jolted awake, thinking next that they were dropping a piano repeatedly—these children are two and six—and only then understood that I was hearing the booms of missiles landing or being intercepted. For a moment, I tried to tell my groggy self again that it was the children because the sirens hadn’t started, and the Homefront Command app on my phone was silent.
Well, you know what happened next. The sirens blared, and the app bleated. In Jerusalem, we have 90 seconds to get to a shelter. I was already fully dressed, which is how I’ve been sleeping since October 7, and I ran to Danny’s room to get him up and into the shelter.
He cried, begging me to let him sleep and put the covers over his head. As a matter of fact, I told him that he needed to put on his sneakers and that we had to go to the shelter for a few minutes. I told him he could have a snack when we got home. I told him he would have fun talking to our neighbors.
All this continued as the sirens continued and the booms became more frequent. I know people in the south of Israel have suffered bombardments for years, but I had never heard anything like this. Neither had Danny. And like many people on the autism spectrum, loud noises upset him.
After a moment, he sat up.
"The booms can't hurt you; they just make noise."
“The booms can’t hurt you. They just make noise,” he said.
Ninety seconds . . . How many were left?
“Put on your shoes,” I repeated. As he knew from previous wars, scorpions sometimes lived in the shelter.
“The noise can’t hurt me. Because I’m a tough guy,” he said, stepping into his sneakers, as I grabbed the key to the apartment and the key to the building’s bomb shelter.
Yes, even as Iranian missiles were confirmed to be on their way to Israeli skies, my neighbors were so concerned that the bikes, strollers, and old exercise machines that they store year-round in the shelter might get stolen or damaged that they insisted on keeping it padlocked.
Maybe if you understand that, you will truly grasp the essence of life in Israel these days.
We were the first ones at the shelter door, and as Danny repeated his “The noise can’t hurt you” mantra, I struggled to open the shelter lock and eventually gave up as a more dexterous neighbor stepped in.
We sat in plastic chairs. The two children from upstairs climbed into their mother’s lap while their father stood by the door with a rifle.
“I’m tired,” said Danny.
“You can rest your head on me,” I said.
He did.
“Is it 10 minutes from the beginning of the siren or the end of the siren?” someone asked, as someone always does.
I noticed a bag of books and toys I had put in the room on October 7, and handed it to Danny. He leafed through a Hebrew version of the Chicken Little story with pictures from the movie. Yes, the sky was falling in the book, too. And then it wasn’t. It calmed him down. He had always liked that story.
He asked the new neighbors their names. After they answered, he said, “Do you have any pets?” They didn’t, but they used to. He asked their late dog’s name. I don’t remember it, but Danny will. Every time he sees them for the rest of his life, he will mention their dog by name.
We stood up when it was 10 minutes from the beginning of the siren or the end of it, and it was quiet outside. Back in our apartment, I answered texts from friends and family while Danny turned down a snack, unusual for him, and got back into bed. Eventually, he fell asleep.
I did, too, and I let us both sleep late, knowing it wasn’t worth trying to get him back at the usual time. In the morning, I made him matzah brei, his favorite breakfast at this time of year.
While I cooked, he asked me to listen to Arik Einstein songs. The first one he picked was “Lilah Shel Cochavim” (Night of Stars), about looking up at the sky on a beautiful night.
The next was “Ani Ve Ata” (Me and You), about wanting to change the world with someone you love.
The third was “Pesek Zman” (Break), about taking some time out and not thinking. The opening lines are: “To take a break and not think/To sit by the sea and not to worry/To let your mind rest from the explosions/To let your heart rest from the pressures.”
Einstein meant figurative explosions, I think, not literal ones. But it worked for us. When we got back to his village, I told the social worker about everything that had gone on during the night and how strong he had been. But he didn’t want to hear about it.
“Mom, can you go home?” he asked, and I went. The booms hadn’t hurt him; they just made noise.