This morning instead of taking our dogs for a jog on the boardwalk along the Haifa shore, I took them straight out of our home and up the steep street towards Carmel Center. After about ten minutes there was a preliminary missile alert letting me know that missiles had been fired from Iran and might target our area. The exact message that we get on our phone states, “In the next few minutes alarms are expected in your area”. I kept jogging but I looked at the apartment buildings to see where I might go if there was an actual alarm, and indeed an alarm sounded. I saw that the apartment building I was passing had their door open as is required by law and I joined the people in the building down to their bomb shelter, with the two dogs.

I live in a world of probabilities, so I’m not worried about being hit by a missile. We were in the 18th day of this war, and I had internalized the risks and found them to be small. In days past I would have ignored the siren and keep merrily jogging on my way. But recently I made a decision to follow the guidelines. I used to be skeptical about the efficacy of bomb shelters against a ballistic missile from Iran, in the last 3 years of war I’ve noticed that the bomb shelters are indeed effective. Second, I decided to get past my distrust and disgust with authority that was engendered during the COVID years. I internalized that while Israel might have been wrong about a virus, from years of brutal experience they know how to behave in war. It is right and proper that I follow instructions, if not for my own safety, then for the sake of setting an example.

I followed the people down the stairs to the basement and entered the reinforced room where there were plenty of plastic chairs along the wall and sat down with the two dogs. There were about 20 people in the shelter – a few older folk, a lot of families with their kids wrapped in blankets half asleep, and a few younger couples. A couple in the corner had a dog who initially barked at my dogs but then stopped. Then a family came down with a huge dog in a muzzle who had a barking fit when he saw strange dogs in his territory, but they took the dog around the corner, and he calmed down.

There I was in an apartment building with strangers and in spite of the inconvenience of my two dogs I was accepted with grace. I watched the children who were dozing, and their parents who were tired, and the couples who were chatting, and the older people who were cheerful. I was grateful.

Itamar, our youngest grandchild, is 2 years and three months old. A blondish, curly haired, dynamo of charm and delicious mischievousness. During this war where Iran is firing intercontinental missiles at our cities, we’ve been doing our best to help take care of him while his father is in reserve duty and his mother (working for her PhD in physics at the Weitzman Institute) has moved here to Haifa to be with her family in their place that has a bomb shelter.

The other day my husband and I had Itamar and took him to our favorite playground. While Itamar was playing we got the pre-alert that an Iranian missile was on its way and might be coming towards us. We called Itamar and strolled to the ‘bomb shelter’ that the Haifa municipality had placed next the playground. These shelters are small fortified concrete boxes with metal doors.

Itamar played around that area, and then the actual siren did go off, and we went inside with a bunch of people from the gas station nearby. Itamar is not the slightest bit afraid of the sirens. His parents taught him to howl like a wolf when there’s a siren and made it a game. So Itamar was howling in joy. One of the guys closed the door – total darkness. Everybody turned on the flashlight of their phones. I was in the corner holding Itamar, while my husband held the phone with the light on. The one other woman who was in the shelter had her phone on high volume, and had every alert in the whole country blaring.

I tend towards claustrophobia and that woman with her phone blaring made it worse. I almost started yelling at her, “turn off that fking phone!” But… sanity came back to me. I slid down and sat on the floor in the corner holding Itamar, and started softly singing his favorite lullabies. He joined in, everybody in the shelter smiled (except that woman).  The all clear sounded and we went back out to the playground.

Our older grandchildren, Eden and Golan, are 4 year old twins. They live in a town about 45 minutes east of Haifa. Their parents work in jobs that are considered crucial and thus they did not get much time off during the war even though all childcare and kindergartens were cancelled. I drove over several days a week to care for the children leaving their parents free to work.

Good Lord! What do you do with 4 year old, high energy twins, in the middle of a war while their parents are at work? Some people would put on the TV or the smartphone and let their children’s brains rot, but our family is anti screens, so that wasn’t an option.

When the kids got tired of their books, paints, games, and their back yard at home; and I had finished getting something set up for lunch we would drive the 2 minutes to the old part of the town that has bomb shelters spread out every 5 minutes walking distance. (In the new part of town every house has its own special bomb shelter room.)

The children rode their tricycles to the playground, usually at least a few other kids would be there, then to the little store to get ice cream, and then to the Gymboree. A place of genius. It’s a bomb shelter, but… it is set up as a place for kids to play. With pads for acrobatics, and tunnels, and numerous, always different, donated toys, and dolls, and costumes, and puzzles and a ball pit. This place is usually used as a place to go if it is raining in the winter, or too hot in the summer.

In a war, it’s a refuge. Even the most worried parents take their kids there. I would sit on the chairs on the edge and relax – sometimes chatting with the other parents or grandparents in my broken Hebrew. And all the kids played. Thank goodness for the Gymboree.

In Israel there is the strength symbolized by operation Roaring Lion, but there is also the quiet strength of a Gymboree in a bomb shelter.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)