Category: Family

Climate Changes, Community, Environment, Family

A simple Earth Day in Israel

Jen

I remember my first Earth Day experience.

It was 10th grade and someone came up with the idea to boycott styrofoam.

The lunch room, of course, used styrofoam trays. And despite the efforts of a few forward thinking, future activists, the school administration refused to reconsider this earth-unfriendly decision.

So the students revolted. At a coordinated time in the afternoon, which happened to fall in the middle of Biology class, we watched the minute hand move slowly towards the 3. At 1:15 pm precisely, a handful of us stood up (after confirming with our eyes that we wouldn’t back out) and walked out of the classroom to the grassy field in front of the school.

We stayed there — despite warnings from the hall monitors and the lunch aides– shouting “No more styrofoam! Heal our Earth!” (or something powerfully catchy like that.) When the bell rang for the next period, I headed to Spanish class. And that concluded my career as a teenage environmental activist. This minor act was the only rebellious thing I did in my entire high school career. And I regret that. I should have staged more walk-outs or at least pierced more extremities.

Nothing changed in the lunchroom after the protest; not at least during my four years at Cherry Hill High School East.  The styrofoam trays hung around  — long after our protests. I bet they’re still hanging around… in a dump somewhere.

20 years later, I hope someone’s wised up and reinstated washable, reusable trays. Even wiser would be to bring your own lunch considering trans fatty french fries and carcinogenic hot dogs are still the stars of the lunchroom and that school lunches are linked with obesity. But I digress.

20 years later, I’m still the good girl I was in high school.

I can’t help myself.

The most rebellious act I’ll be pulling on this upcoming Earth Day, Monday, April 22 is blogging about other people’s trash.

Or picking some up.

Frankly, that’s better than doing nothing, which is what most people will opt to do on Monday.

Nothing.

Earth Day, for most, is just another piece of colored in line-art in a child’s backpack. It’s just another front page feature in Parade Magazine. It’s a photo op.

Surely, some will visit an eco-themed art exhibit or see an eco-film. Some might even take part in a small protest like I did once upon a time.

Not me.

I propose we all do something simple on Monday.

Pick up a piece of trash. Someone else’s trash.

Put it in the proper receptacle — paper with paper. Plastic with plastic. Food stuff in a compost pile.

This one simple act doesn’t require group think. Or a ticket stub.

Just you.

Pick up some trash.

If you want to take one extra step, consider not buying anything on Monday that’s meant to be thrown away.

And stop throwing stuff away. Keep it. Reuse it. Pass it on.

Teach your kids all of the above.

Make Earth Day simple this year.

Be a lone activist … and see how even a quiet, obedient good girl (or boy) can make a difference.

Family, Love

There are days like this

Jen

Some days I feel really bad I’m not creating more intentional and meaningful traditions for my kids.

Holiday rituals.

Bedtime rituals.

Weekend rituals.

For an obsessive-compulsive anxiety-prone doomsday prepper, you’d think I’d be more ritual loving.

Save for my weekly Friday morning cleaning rituals, I’m not.

Rituals or not, I do believe I’m creating content for my kids’ memoirs (which I secretly hope will end up in the humor section next to David Sedaris).

The tradition my husband and I unintentionally foster most in our family is laughing when you should be shuddering with fear or despair; evidenced by my children’s reaction last weekend to our epic fight in the car on one of the final days of “Israeli Passover Survivor.”

In order not to divulge too much information that will first cause my husband to leave me and second propel his lawyer to file for defamation and full custody, I’ll just say that my children should have been weeping in response to our lower-than-low behavior, but instead they laughed.

They laughed hysterically.

One barb followed the next. And it didn’t matter if it came out of his mouth or mine, they laughed.

They thought we were joking. Or they just thought we were practicing inappropriate comedy routines a la Louis CK or Dane Cook  (neither of which my children know or love … yet.)

Maybe they were giggling nervously. I definitely passed onto them a propensity for this flaw.

But their laughter was louder than giggling, and together they fueled each other on.

The front seat was a war zone.

But the back seat was the first row at the Improv.

Who knows why my children were laughing?

At the time — even in the heat of the inappropriateness of that moment — I understood I’d rather they laugh than shut down in fear.

This is true for almost every day of my life…and theirs.

I’d rather they laugh.

I don’t know if laughter is a tradition or a ritual or something that can be truly intentionally passed on from parent to child.

All I know is that it makes days like this tolerable,

Survivable.

It turns our resentment into ridiculousness.

It dissolves pain and bitterness.

It quiets the doubt.

Laughter lets light in.

And then love in.

My children may grow up God-less heathens. They may grow up to be without conventions, customs, or culture.

But they will grow up laughing.

And I suppose this is as good an inheritance as any.

Family, Letting Go, Parenting

When we grow up, will I be a lady?

Jen

Today, while driving my kids to the playground in the next community over (the only thing I could motivate to do on this 169th Day of Passover vacation in Israel), I found myself in deep discussion with them about Jesus and parenting.

Two topics I know almost nothing about, but pretend like I do, sometimes.

The conversation began with my realization that today is Easter Sunday.

You wouldn’t know from the look of things around here that Jesus died for our sins in this neck of the woods some 2000 years ago.  This is what it’s like to live in the boonies of the Jewish State.

Easter is just another Sunday in Spring.

I don’t know much about Jesus, and I certainly told at least three partial untruths, unintentionally contributing to the spread of blood libel I’m sure. But it all made for an interesting enough diversion to keep the backseat from being a war zone for five minutes.

If that’s not a Passover mitzvah, I don’t know what is.

It’s been a long, tough school break.

One that only looks perfect in pictures.

annie on rope swing

zombie oliver

tobey cafe

The last 16 days is the longest I’ve been alone with my kids since I went back to work full-time two years ago.

And I haven’t even been alone that whole time. I’ve been lucky enough to have my mother in town visiting; my in-laws taking over for a day or two; and my husband around for the Seder and the weekends.

In the days leading up to the long break, I mentally prepared. I even convinced myself all this time alone with them was going to be kinda fun. I must have forgotten the agony of those long holiday vacations back in America when I was a stay-at-home or work-at-home mom. And I completely forgot a basic life lesson:

16 days together with anyone — no matter who, no matter how much you like them — is TOO LONG AND ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU HATE YOURSELF, AND EVERYONE ELSE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ADORABLY CUTE BABIES AND BUNNIES.

No, this vacation wasn’t perfect, and made me doubt at times my parenting, my career, and our decision to move to Israel.

But it wasn’t without its moments. Teaching moments. Learning moments. Loving moments.

Like the moment today after we finished talking about Jesus and the Jews.

We had just entered the gated community with the cool playground.

I openly admired the houses there. One in particular with solar panels across the roof, a fat wooden tree house in the shaded backyard, and a porch swing gently embraced by flowering vines.

“Wow. Look at that house. I want to live there when I grow up,” I said aloud mindlessly, still in my imaginary future.

“But, Mommy, you are already grown up,” stated the middle son, who depending on the day can be both the wise, the simple, and the son who did not know how to ask.

“True,” I said. “But, the part they don’t tell you in school, is that you are always growing up. That’s basically, I’m afraid, your life’s work.”

Groans and denials from the back seat as we arrived at the playground.

“Not true!”

“What are you talking about?

“Grownups get to decide everything!”

(After 169 days together, you could say that a few punishments have been handed out and threats thrown around.)

“You think they teach parenting at school?” I pressed my kids, cranking my neck around to give them my most serious, yet loving advice face. “Every single decision I make when I’m with you guys is a potential HUGE mistake, or at the very least a big, fat lesson for me to learn for next time. I’m growing up the same as you! Living, learning, figuring stuff out.”

I park the car.

Silence.

And then they open the doors and run off to swing from a rope tied to a tree.

So much for teaching moments.

I start to say something to them — to shout at them from the open window.

“Did you hear me?!

“Don’t run!”

“Be careful!”

“Take turns!”

But I can’t quite get out the words.

I’m too busy growing up.

Family, Love, Mindfulness, Parenting

My life in pictures

Jen

When I was a girl, I imagined my life a movie.

In fact, I have a few distinct memories of moments in which I felt very present to the experience of being watched.

This makes me sound crazy. Paranoid. Egotistical.

I know.

But, nonetheless, every once in a while I’d be walking down the street with a friend or engaged in a song and dance with my brother, and suddenly sense an observer.

I’d look around. Nobody was there.

Over time, I resolved this to be an inexplicable sensation I labeled, “My life in pictures.”

Now, as an observant adult, as a mindful lifer, as a humbled human being awed by her children, terrified by her own mortality…I find I am a member of the audience, instead; with one greasy hand inside the popcorn box and the other gripping the side of the aisle seat wondering…

How will it all end?

Meanwhile, I’m also the excited, but cautious cinematographer.

Struck breathless by extraordinarily poignant scenes

moti penina piano

Obsessed with capturing light

lights tangled

and angles

boys in the grass

Wondering all the time if other people can see what I see…

If other people feel the love and the loss inside a half-eaten cupcake

cupcake

Or the extraordinary sadness of a broken plate

plate

I sometimes watch my husband chase the children and know that once there was someone who watched me.

Someone is still watching.

A critic, a fan, or just a curious spectator of my life in pictures.

Family, Letting Go, Mindfulness, Parenting, Religion

Purim lots

Jen

My husband and I fell in love and got married quicker than you can say “Who moved my cheese?”

Almost as quickly, if not quicker, we got pregnant with our first kid.

We didn’t take the time to have the important parenting conversations like,

“Do you mind if our kids eat candy for breakfast?”

“Is it important that our kids go to college? Or is GED good enough?”

“Is it okay if our son marries his cousin?”

Somehow, we’ve made it this far without divorcing or selling one of our children on the black market.

Eventually, we had a lot of those crucial conversations, and luckily see eye-to-eye on most parenting issues.

Our values line up.

When we disagree, I can usually persuade him.  Sometimes it takes a few years…Like the time he refused to switch from Heinz ketchup to the organic Whole Foods brand.

Three years later the organic brand was in our fridge door.

(Now, in Israel, we’re back to Heinz. It’s a specialty item, which in Hebrew means “practically organic.”)

There was this one time, however, when my husband was right in the first place.

We were talking about our kids as teenagers and how comfortable we would feel if one of them decided to dress “Goth.”

My husband was insistent that we would be flexible about piercings and black lipstick and long leather jackets. He said we needed to foster their sense of creativity and self expression.

I could see his point, though I was hesitant and reluctant.

Truth is: I don’t want my kid to be the kid teachers and other kids are afraid of.

Also, I’ve never been good at not being scared of people who dress scary.

I don’t want to be scared of my own kid.

Our kids are still too young to be expressing themselves with their outerwear just yet, but one day a year, my oldest son wants to show off his dark side.

Purim.

The other kids come to the bus stop in homemade Mordechai costumes, or walking clever references to pop culture.

But my kid?

Year after year, he wants to scare the bejeezus out of you.

scary purim costume

My husband usually goes along with it.

But this year, concerning the above nail-impaled zombie mask, my husband was himself reluctant.

At first, he considering forbidding my son to wear the mask. (It was a gift from Saba and Savta.)

It’s not appropriate, my husband told me. Purim is not Halloween.

He’s right.

Or at least maybe he’s right.

Who am I to know what’s Purim appropriate? I’m still a Jew in progress. Still an immigrant mom. Still figuring out how not to embarrass myself on a daily basis.

But what I do know —  what I’m sure of — is that my husband was right when we first had that conversation 8 or 9 years ago.

We absolutely, positively want our children to feel free to express themselves.

As long as they aren’t hurting themselves, or others, we want them to be comfortable showing the world who they are.

To dance.

To sing.

To frolic.

To feast.

To be free.

This is Purim spirit, I’m sure of it.

This much I know.

Family, Love, Making Friends, Parenting

When life is full, shep nachas

Jen

I’ve been lamenting lately a perceived lack of time to write new blog posts.

An idea will pop into my head, for instance, but in between the idea and the publish button is a perceived lack of opportunity to sit and transform the idea into a story.

Too busy at work. Too tired at home. No time in between.

Life is full.

Can you hear my voice?

How does it sound?

“Life is full,” she said with a sigh.

“Life is full,” she whispered as she let her head fall heavily onto the pillow.

“Life is full,” she grumbled as she hastily prepared dinner for three hungry, irritable children.

“Life is full,” she thought to herself as she watched her husband chase her daughter around the grassy field.

When I put aside my frustration and my lament, I can acknowledge that I am so very lucky that — blog posts or not —

Life is full.

*  *  *

So while I only have three minutes today in between this and that, I will use it to shep a little Aliyah nachas.

Purim at Givat El

That little guy in the top hat is my middle son.

He’s six years old.

When we arrived in Israel two years ago, he didn’t speak a word of Hebrew.  He was cute, but shy.

Lovable, but sensitive.

January 2011, at Gan on Kibbutz Hannaton
January 2011, at Gan on Kibbutz Hannaton

Little.

Breakable.

For the first two weeks at Gan, he didn’t speak a word to anyone.

In fact, one day he pretended he was blind.

Literally.

He walked around with his eyes closed all day.

The kids ran up to me at pickup time to ask me if it was true, “Is he blind?”

No, I told them. Just shy. Nervous.

When I asked him later why he pretended to be blind, he told me he didn’t want anyone to notice him.

It took him only three weeks to turn those confused children into his best friends.

He’s older now. Adjusted. Still cute, and a bit shy. Still sensitive, yes, but…

More Israeli.

When it comes to song and dance — this kid is Israeli through and through.

It doesn’t matter what the holiday, what the occasion, this kid’s got the soul and spirit of a sabra.

Purim in Givat Ela ceremony

This morning, my heart burst with joy and pride as his “Kitah Aleph” (first grade) class performed a Purim presentation for the rest of the school and for parents.

Yup: The middle guy in the top hat memorized his line in Hebrew, recited it flawlessly in front of the entire school, and sung and danced his little heart out.

Everyone noticed him.

Especially me.

My life is full.

And lucky for me it takes no time at all to shep nachas.

Just a moment to change your tune.

Family, Letting Go, Living in Community, Love, Making Friends, Mindfulness, Parenting, Uncategorized

I wasn’t always like this

Jen

A well-thought out middle name is an underused tool.

My middle name should be “in progress.”

Jen In Progress.

In my case, In Progress would remind me to be compassionate, to others, but mostly to myself.

Mother In Progress

Wife In Progress

Friend In Progress

It would remind me that I will always be a novice no matter how expert I might become at a skill or a task.

Employee In Progress

Coworker In Progress

Marketing Goddess In Progress

It would remind me that self-expression is a gift wrapped in complicated responsibility

Writer In Progress

Coach In Progress

Community leader In Progress

And that how I define myself is as temporary as it is permanent

Jew In Progress

Israeli In Progress

Kibbutznik In Progress

If my middle name was In Progress, every time I made a serious decision, committed myself to a long term action plan, said Yes or said No, I would acknowledge that I am doing so with the purest of intentions as well as the greatest of uncertainties.

That I am always “in progress” means that I may always forgive myself.  I may always start over. I may always assume that tomorrow will be better.

Even when it’s not.

In Progress reminds me to be in motion. To repair that which I may have broken. To rediscover the gratitude I may have misplaced. To reignite the passion I have let wane.

To progress.

To journey.

To grow.

Family, Living in Community, Love, Making Friends, Middle East Conflict

I can’t remember growing older

Jen

When you’re a parent, each day is a struggle not to live in the future.

What if?

What will be?

What will she look like?

How will he make it through?

And some days are harder than others.

The days when fear grips you.

When headlines make you want to keep your child locked inside a bubble-wrapped, sterilized room forever.

You want to be locked inside, too.

This morning, my 10-year-old son and his friends are enjoying a weekend morning.

They’re playing Playmobil and singing as they manipulate their imaginary worlds.

They’re chilling out, numbing their minds in front of the Wii.

As I hear their squeaky pre-pubescent voices belt out a mix of Shabbat songs and Rhianna, I laugh.

For a moment, I’m in the present.

They are cute.

But a moment later, I’m in the future.

They are tough. Or pretending to be.

These boys?

These four boys?

They’ll be soldiers some day?

boys playing

I don’t believe it.

I can’t picture it.

I wish it away.

How many other mothers in Israel have wished it away?

Countless. As many as there are mothers.

How many other mothers saw 10 turn into 18 in an instant?

How many other mothers can touch 10? Taste 10? Smell their 10 year old boy’s sweating, dirty self walking in the door at 6 o’clock?

They scream!

Someone has fallen into an imaginary Lego hole. Someone has knocked down a Playmobil brigade.

Oh please.

Please let those screams,

please please please,

always be screams of play.

Always be screams of who gets the first turn

Not screams of agony.

Let this moment last.

Climate Changes, Education, Environment, Family, Food, Health

What matters to me most

Jen

What matters to me most in life and politics is what’s closest to my heart. It’s related directly to my own personal experience.

Isn’t that true for everyone?

And, perhaps, why I haven’t connected to the elections in Israel is because what matters most to me doesn’t matter to most of the people voting in this election. Or most of the people that live in Israel.

But what I still don’t get is why?

In between fighting wars, and between reading the newspaper in the morning and watching the news at night, don’t we all need/want to live healthy lives?

Don’t my neighbors, friends, relatives understand that nothing else matters once your health is poor?

Taxes won’t matter.

Housing prices won’t matter.

Military duty won’t matter.

Statehood won’t matter.

Once a health crisis takes over, little else matters.

And each and every one of us are in some stage of a health crisis right now.

Many of us are only days, weeks, years away from cancer due to chemicals in our food and self care products.

Many of our children are only days, weeks, years away from debilitating asthma due to air pollution.

Many of our grandchildren are…

Many of our grandchildren are…

Many of our grandchildren are…

an impossibility

due to rising infertility rates … climate change … drought…. famine…diminishing resources on our planet.

Vote what matters.

Policy wordle

Community, Family, Living in Community, Love

A woman on the brink of death

Jen

(This was originally posted on the Times of Israel)

Sometimes I imagine I am a woman on her death bed.

How else to explain the sense of wonder I have the minute I pull out of my driveway each morning to head to work?

Before I even leave the boundaries of my small community in Northern Israel, my head turns from side to side looking out the car window for a sign of nature’s wonder.

Morning light breaking through a stunning cloud formation overhead.

cloud formation

The sun rising over the Eshkol Reservoir.

sun over eshkol

The first kalanit popping up in the fields lining the road into our neighborhood.

kalanit

Who else does this but a woman about to die?

Sometimes I catch myself imagining I am her — a woman on her death bed.

I am paralyzed. Frightened.

Could it be true?

What if it was?

And then I laugh with the realization that it is true.

We all are.

We are born to die.

And as much as we fear it, we spend our lives rushing towards it…towards death.

Rushing through breakfast; pushing the kids out the door; grabbing three different bags – a laptop bag, a lunch bag, a pocketbook – and throwing them into the back seat. We drink a to-go cup of coffee on the way. We turn on the radio and scan the words for news. News that will help us make decisions; make us feel right; make us feel wrong.

Get us there quicker.

We breeze by our coworkers; we tweet through our days. Our fingers sore from scrolling, from typing, from pointing.

Who else but a woman about to die notices the teeny tiny wren perched on the tallest branch of a pine tree across the street from the entrance to Rafael?

Who else catches through her passenger side window the hearty laugh of a teenage girl in a bronze glittery head scarf waiting for the bus to Karmiel?

Who else but a woman on the brink of demise notices the blend of hope and fear on the faces of the black men – the ones standing on the side of the kikar at the entrance to Kfar Manda — as she passes them during rush hour?

Who else but a woman about to die?

We characterize our behavior as “living,” but really we are rushing towards death. Getting there quicker, richer, righter.

Until we stop.

And in the moment we stop – in the slow minutes spent behind a tractor trailer chugging up a hill, for instance – we slow down death.

We drink in life.

Drink it in.

annabel bowling

Family, Letting Go, Love, Middle East Conflict, Parenting, Politics

Listen to the mothers

Jen

We’re in the middle of a war.

It’s not a real war, not yet, my vatikim co-workers and friends tell me.

But they don’t live in the South. They don’t live in Gaza. And they don’t live on Twitter.

A real war is taking place on Twitter.

Instead of fiery op-eds in the New York Times, social media has become the new PR battleground for the Middle East Conflict.

As it should be.

Because the mainstream media is doing a poor job of telling it like it is.

To be fair, however, “telling it like it is” on Twitter also is pretty subjective. Even when it’s told by those of us with a traditional journalism background.

So what to do for a girl who wants to get the real story?

I say, listen to the mothers.

We mothers in Israel are keeping it real.

We mothers in Israel are having heartfelt, honest conversations with our children. We are keeping them calm.

We mothers in Israel might make up stories when the real becomes too real, but we share them only at bedtime and whisper them into innocent ears.

True, we aren’t always clear-headed.  We aren’t always fair. And sometimes we growl because that’s what mama bears do when they get scared.

But, mostly we observe; we ponder; and then we tell it like it is from a heart-centered mother’s point of view.

At least, those of us on the front lines of the social media war do.

* * * *

Politicians or military professionals, if they bothered to listen to the mothers,  would laugh at us. Belittle us. Keep us far away from the battleground.

We can’t risk opening our hearts too wide, the combat professionals  would say. We can’t allow ourselves to be too vulnerable.

And yet, what any social media expert will tell you is that the true value of social media is connection.

Don’t bother using social media — not for any cause, not for any business — unless you are prepared to be vulnerable. To share of yourself. To engage.

And this is why the mothers in Israel are a most effective tool in this social media war.

You believe us.

Why? Because our stories feel … real.

They feel real because you know us.

Or, at least you feel like you do.

Because we dared to open our hearts to you.

Yet, there’s a side effect to listening to the mothers …

Be prepared.

You might become susceptible to love.

Susceptible to love not just for your own child, but for another woman’s child.

(Even for the child of your supposed enemy in this not-quite-yet-a-war.)

When I listen to the mothers, my heart opens to other mothers.

Not just to the mothers of 19-year-old Israeli soldiers. Mothers who must be very conflicted: Protect my son? Or protect my country?

But also to the mother in Gaza, who might have a blog post ready to burst out from her heart, but no outlet through which to express it.

When I listen to the mothers, my heart opens

My heart…

Opens.

And it hurts. Like it should.

War should hurt.

War should hurt.

When war hurts, we are one step closer to being desperate enough to let go enough to end it.

Culture, Family, Food allergies, Health

Peanut-flavored twist of fate, or a miracle?

Jen

I’m writing this while it’s still very fresh.

Because I feel like I need to process it all.

Earlier this week I was engaged in a heated discussion in the comments section of a fellow blogger and fellow mom of food allergic kids about how Israel doesn’t take food allergies seriously.

Earlier this morning, I blogged about how frustrated I feel with the Israel medical care system.

And then, like a freak thunderstorm that knocks down the tree that just misses your house, the Universe decided it wanted to tell me something.

I think. Or else it’s all a very very strange coincidence.

Around lunch time, I got a call from my husband. He was on his way home with the boys from school. The 9 year old had just thrown up all over the car. My husband then told me that my son had eaten a candy at school and started feeling sick after. He was afraid it had nuts in it.

But he wasn’t sure. My son hadn’t read the ingredients.

Our smart son; our careful son; the one who has had now 7 years of experience living with food allergies… he slipped up.

Of course, one can understand. It was a sucking candy. Not a chocolate bar. Not a cake or a cookie or a brownie. An orange-flavored hard candy. At least that’s what it looked like and even tasted like to him.

In all our years of reading ingredients, we have never once ever come upon a hard sucking candy with nuts in it (save for coconut oil, which he is not allergic to.)

I think he got complacent. And, like any 9 year old boy, careless.

Maybe we got complacent. We stopped nudging him.

Either way, today, after years of wondering what it would be like to look anaphylaxis  in the face, I did. Smack dab.

This wasn’t my son’s first allergic reaction. He’s had three reactions in the past — one last Spring even to a new food he wasn’t allergic to in the past — but all have been treated  successfully with Benadryl, an antihistamine. It’s the first course of treatment according to our allergists, unless his lips swell or he can’t breathe.

Today, his lips weren’t swollen and he could still breathe, but yet, he was not right. I could tell. Kinda. But not for certain.

As soon as he got home, I could see he was pale. He also couldn’t breathe from his nose. And while he could still breathe from his mouth, his throat hurt and his voice sounded like he had something stuck in there.

I wasn’t quite sure he “needed” the epipen. But I held on to it as I evaluated him. I looked in his throat. It looked swollen.

I had just given myself the epipen a few months before for what I had thought was allergy but turned out to be food poisoning. At the time, I told myself, “It was good you did. Now you know it doesn’t really hurt. Now you will really give it to the kids if they need it and not worry about it hurting.” (Ask any parent of kids with food allergies and most will tell you they worry about having to give the epipen to their kid. “I don’t want to give him the shot. It will hurt.”)

I looked at my son and asked, “Do you feel I should give you the epipen?”

He was scared. He hesitated. He didn’t say, No. But he couldn’t say, Yes.

I said yes for him.

I reminded him that it wouldn’t hurt. It would help.

He was brave. Very brave, as I stuck the epipen in his thigh.

Thank goodness, I did. Later, after we took him to the doctor; after the doctor checked his vitals; after he gave him steroids as a follow up treatment; he told us, we did the right thing.

And it was only after that, my husband pulled out one of the wrapped candies the teacher had given us to show us what he ate. Another child had handed them out during recess when the teacher wasn’t there.

The candy said Praline on the wrapper.

Pralines are not nuts, themselves. They are a nut-flavored candy or cookie.  It wasn’t part of our vocabulary … the one we’ve always used when training him on what to do around food. My son didn’t know what a praline was. Because it’s a nut candy, he’s never eaten it. Also, it’s not something children generally eat in anywhere in America I’ve ever been (except Georgia, now that I think about it). My son has never seen anything like that.

Of course, if he had read the ingredients written in teeny tiny crumpled up type on the wrapper, he would have seen the word “peanut.” We did.

I can’t be angry at my son. I am too thankful right now he is alive.

I am thankful he trusted his body and got help right away.

I’m thankful that his teacher called us immediately as soon as she heard he had eaten the candy.

I’m thankful my husband happened to be nearby with the car and could get him from school.

I’m thankful I had the courage to give him the epipen even though I wasn’t sure he “needed” it.

I’m thankful there was a clinic open to see my child (even though the first two ones we called were closed and no one available to answer the phones).

I’m thankful we had friends around to help us with our other kids.

I’m thankful traffic on the one lane road to the clinic wasn’t extraordinarily slow as it often can be.

I’m thankful the doctor on call at the clinic happened to be our pediatrician, who knew us, and who we felt comfortable with.

I’m happy he took us seriously. I’m happy the nurse and the receptionist at the clinic also took us very seriously. I’m happy the teacher (who called us later to check on him and express her concern) and the children in my son’s class all took it seriously.

Of course, I am most thankful he is sitting next to me right now bugging me to get off the computer and get him a popsicle.

He is ok.

He is ok.

And, perhaps, there are Israelis who take food allergies seriously.

After today, I imagine some of them will likely take them more seriously than they did before.

I’m not suggesting the turn of events was all the work of something supernatural or magical. Or that someone or something was really trying to send me a message.

(They do take it seriously.)

(He is in safe hands.)

(You will know what to do.)

(He will be okay.)

But, one way or another?

Message received.