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Picture this. Me, pregnant with our second child and not working, sitting outside with my four year old son.
Neither of us speak Hebrew yet. Having been in this country for only a few months, we are both anxious to fit in, to become a part of this new country. Joshua, my son, spent the first four years of his life in Philadelphia. He and I both knew the rules. He learned the power word, "NO', which when said in the right tone of voice would stop him in his tracks (and thus prevent him from picking up glass shards or crack vials and would stop him from running out into traffic). I knew where he was at any given moment in the day and when we were out in public, he was never farther than a few feet from my side. While he played in a playground, I sat nearby, the vigilant security guard, watching for suspicious adults and checking the sandbox for beer bottle fragments. He knew his name and his address almost from the time he could first speak. All these were part of survival in a big city. No big deal. Just how it was.
But now we are in Israel, sitting outside with the neighborhood children. He has never had many friends and now he wants to play with the kids from our apartment building. They
are in the parking lot, using an empty soda bottle, as part of a game that I have never seen before. Joshua looks at me, questions in his eyes, because he expects me, the all knowing parent to
explain the rules to him. And I can't.
In Philadelphia, I knew stick ball and hopscotch. I knew Red Light, Green Light and Hide and Go Seek.
I have never seen a game that involves banging a soda bottle three times on the street. They try to explain, we try to understand, but it doesn't work. Nor do we fair any better with the game involving dried apricot pits or the one where all the kids line up against the wall and talk about dolls. Seeking to distract him, we go to the park where he and I play together for a bit. Still watchful, still checking for glass shards.
Time passes.
My daughter, Savion, is born and Joshua starts going to school. The things I couldn't teach him, he learns from the friends he makes. When there are problems, we try to work them out but more and more, his answers come from the children his own age ... not from his parents who are hopelessly ignorant of the games played by Israeli children.
This year marks our fifth anniversary.
Five years since we left everything we knew and came to live in Israel. The changes have been remarkable. Joshua, now 9, and Savion, now 4, go downstairs together and play outside while I catch up on housework upstairs. Joshua can go to the playground on his own, in complete safety, and has been doing so for years now. When I try out the power word on my daughter, Savion arches one of her dainty eyebrows at me as if to say, "Mom, that's not a nice way to talk." She approaches every adult at the mall and says "Hi". She is always answered, never ignored. When she cries in the grocery store, the manager brings her a piece of candy. When she goes to the restaurant, the waitresses take her into the servers' station and give her cookies and little drink umbrellas to play with. It's a different world.
We don't worry about street people, drive by shootings or crack vials on our sidewalk.
Instead, we learn what to do when we see a suspicious package on the street. My mother-in-law almost had a suit case exploded by a police robot because she left the suitcase sitting by a chair when she went to the bathroom. Security is no joke. We open our backpacks and purses whenever we go to a shopping mall, a movie theater, a concert, even the grocery store. The kids talk in the classroom about terrorist bombings and why Prime Minister Rabin was shot. Each of us has a gas mask, given to us by the government, which is kept in our house and exchanged regularly. We couldn't bring Savion home from the hospital without one. At the age of 9, Joshua has already accepted the fact that when he is 18 he will go into the military and defend his country. He's at peace with the idea, even if I am not.
I am no longer worried that my children will be snatched off the street or abused in day care. I don't think about their being seduced into becoming gang members or learning about
drugs while still in elementary school. I have left those things behind me, in my other life. When I think about it, not knowing the latest games and having a child who speaks the language of
the country better than I ever will are small prices to pay for the peace of mind we have found. Here, we can give them a freedom that would not have been possible back in Philadelphia.
It is, I think, the hardest thing to understand about Israel. Outsiders look at our country and say, "but you are at war. How can you feel safe?" I don't have the
answer but I sometimes think that maybe the answer lies in the fact that we have been at war for so long. Israelis know who the enemy is and we cooperate with each other because we are defending our
lives and our country.
We have our problems, in fighting the occasional bad egg just like everywhere else. Yet, I have seen men, armed with guns, start a fight and what happens is the same each time. They drop their guns and settle their differences with words and, sometimes, with their fists.
When pressed, I say that for me, the U.S. was also at war, just an undeclared one. In the States, I didn't know who the enemy was and I was out to protect me and mine. I
was engaged in a struggle to survive against other Americans. I grew up with the dangers, internalized the rules, and knew how to live. Israelis I have spoken to can't even begin to
understand. They are frightened by what they hear about life in the States.
Children on milk cartons? How could such a thing happen?
And I don't have an answer for them either. How did it happen? When did it start?
I don't know. Those were the rules and I knew them. Here, life seems scarier sometimes because I don't know the rules. But, we are learning, day by day, all of us. Now if I could just figure out that game about banging an empty soda bottle on the ground three times, I'll be all set.
Copyright Tori L. Friedlander February 1999
Also read some of Tori's poetry
and Mama's Here
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