The Thing I Can't Talk to You About

Dearest Beens,

We talk all the time. I tell you about my day, my past, my friends. We talk about the weather, what's happening in the news, why things are the way they are. I talk to you, so you will understand, so you will speak proper English, so you will figure out the world around you. I talk to you all the time, about everything. One day, you'll talk back. For now, our conversations are mostly one-sided.

Today, I started.

"Beens," I said. "It's going to be Yom Hazikaron."

And then I stopped.

A lump caught in my throat.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't explain this day to you--tell you about the fallen soldiers and heroes we remember this day. I couldn't tell you of the tragedy, the unbearable losses. I couldn't, because this day becomes more painful by the year, as slowly, I become more Israeli.

It started years ago, when I came to visit your Dad, my boyfriend at the time, and a war broke out. Instead of spending our days together, I was alone in his apartment, and he was in a bunker. I saw him in the mornings and the evenings, before and after he came home from working long, hard nights.

It continued when I made aliyah, and chose to make my emerging "Israeliness" official. I learned to love not just your Dad, but his brothers--your uncles. I feared for them, too--a new level of Israeliness. I prayed that your youngest uncle, serving in a combat unit, would be out of active service before another war broke out--even though I don't really know if I believe in God. I spent last summer terrified that one of your uncles would be sent straight into the conflict.You see, at some point, they became my brothers--and not just "in-law" as we say.

I met your cousins, learned to worry for them. They got called up last summer, and I kept my phone nervously on my desk, in meetings, always on, afraid of a call. It came--a cousin of your cousins was brutally struck down weeks before his wedding. I didn't know him but your Dad and uncles did. Too close. Too real.

And then you arrived, last Rosh Hashanah. All 4.170 kilos of you. You learned to smile, then laugh, then giggle with glee as we kiss you. And now that Yom Hazikaron is here, I am forced to imagine pain I cannot even dream of, because now I am a mother. I have reached a new level of being Israeli. Gone is my need to go to the national ceremony and experience other people's pain--to hear mothers tell of their losses. I hope more fervently than I have ever hoped for anything that this day will never get closer than it is now.

I think of our neighbors, the ones who lost their son last summer. I don't know them, probably never will. I think of their tremendous loss, of the son who won't sit with them for dinner, tonight, tomorrow, or any other night.

And I am so grateful. So very grateful. To those many people who have given their most precious gifts so that you could be born into a beautiful, free, Jewish state.

Because it came at a cost--a high one.

And we musn't ever, ever take that for granted, my sweet boy.

But all of this? It's a lot for a boy who's not yet seven months old. So for now, sleep, my sweet child, and know that your making me ache on this day is a gift I couldn't have imagined you would give.

Much love,

Mummy