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I’m thinking of starting a cooking blog. I’ll call it Recipes for Rockets or Eating between the Shoots.

Because something so mundane as cooking lunch or dinner becomes a tricky proposal when you know you might have to leave the stove for the shelter at any moment.

I would include tips for baking pita on the stovetop (on an upside-down wok) with dough that can sit an extra 15-20 minutes. For baked goods that come out quickly, casseroles that can wait in an oven that’s turned off, soups and stews (just add a bit of extra water if you get an alert that a missile is on the way). If you make rice, turn it off and let it sit in the pot once the water has boiled. Drain your pasta after getting an alert that a siren is about to sound, and boil it again when you get the all clear. Only dress your salad once you return to the table and wait another minute to make sure another missile is not on the way, and that you’ll have time to take a deep breath and eat without rushing.

Friday evening, we had a guest at our dinner table, so I put in a bit of extra effort. The grape leaves were rolled between the early afternoon siren and the evening one; the dry ingredients for the cake had extra time to soak in the orange juice while we sat a siren out in the safe room – with serendipitous results. Of course, dinner started a bit late due to yet another siren, but the soup was well heated; the baked dish managed to come out unburnt; the salad was crisp and lightly dressed.

This is not that blog.

This is a blog post about the disruption of living with missile fire. It is about how many of us have so readily slipped into the alternate lifestyle we know and hate, in which every moment we are aware that we might have to drop everything and head for the nearest shelter. If we have young children at home, they might sleep and play in the safe room, or else we are prepared to grab them, along with a bag of snacks, toys and blankets, and carry them to shelter, multiple times a day. My children are grown, but I’ve been there. We did not invent the lifestyle yesterday.

We enter a kind of stasis. Trips outside our house, even to the neighborhood shop, feel fraught with danger. We are home all day, but work takes on a hallucinatory feel, as we try to explain to our colleagues abroad why nothing can really be accomplished, even as we open our computers and stare at the screens each weekday. We pick up books and put them down, go out to check on the garden, phones in our pockets, listening for the robotic voice that tells us, in Hebrew and Russian, that we need to get to safety. We take up hobbies, try to resist the urge to recheck the news sites to see if anything has changed in the past five minutes.

We’ve become compliant and pliable. We obey the home front orders, staying in the safe room until the all-clear sounds. When politicians praise us collectively for our resilience, we sneer, knowing this is code for “the war is not going to end tomorrow,” but we also give ourselves a private pat on the back. Because we’ve done it so many times before, we know we’ll get through it this time, as well. Except for those of us who will seek out therapy because getting through it gets harder every time; because the exhaustion has become debilitating. Except for those of us who will accept a position abroad and quietly leave.

Our so-called-resilience, not entirely healthy, if we’re being honest, might turn brittle, or it might evolve into stronger mutual reliance between neighbors and friends

Our so-called-resilience, not entirely healthy, if we’re being honest, might turn brittle, or it might evolve into stronger mutual reliance between neighbors and friends

We can’t congregate on the streets, so any opposition to the war is limited to grumbling to others in the shelter. As the euphoria (we’ll topple the Iranian regime) gives way to realism (we can at least take out some missile launchers), we start to see the signs – our defense minister telling us we’ll continue the war for “as long is it takes;” Trump giving vague, contradictory answers about ending the war. When the New York Times uses our favorite term – “miscalculation” – we know we’re the sitting ducks, and not the kind that’s getting lined up in a row anytime soon.

Instead, we find comfort in cooking – even if we need to rethink every meal. We binge-watch TV, write letters assuring friends and family we’re ok, clean our already clean houses and venture out, on nice days, to weed the garden. We invent games for children, try to work, reward ourselves with a nap, music, or a visit to a nearby friend.

This is a blog post about our safe room – built in the period after Oct. 7 when the war in Gaza was already reduced, for us, to weekly protests calling for a return of the hostages, worry for the soldiers and reservists fighting there, planes constantly overhead and distance rumbles.

That safe room is now a haven. We have a little core group of neighbors who come to us at all hours of the night. We know what they look like in their pajamas, which ones snore if they fall asleep on the couch between the alert and the siren. During the day, others join us. It is open to everyone who happens to be in the area or just passing by. We hand out water, pass around snacks. The dog entertains us by making the rounds for pets. The internet works in our safe room, so everyone pulls out a phone, calls others to make sure they are safe, finishes the Wordle they started or just watches the news site to see whether the missiles have been intercepted. Like trying to figure out when a rainstorm will hit by listening to thunder, we remark when we hear booms: That sounded close! Or: Could be Tel Aviv!

This adoptive family situation is an unintended consequence, and one that will change our lives. Because, of course, war is not simply a punctuation mark – a full stop before we take up the next paragraph. We do not step out of our lives and simply return to where we left off, once the government tells us it’s safe to do so. Our so-called-resilience, not entirely healthy, if we’re being honest, might turn brittle, or it might evolve into stronger mutual reliance between neighbors and friends.

This is a blog post about being some of the lucky ones. We are not in the far north, where nonstop rocket strikes and sirens are simultaneous. We are not among the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese forced to leave their homes, nor are we innocent civilians in Tehran feeling the ground shake and watching smoke rise above the city. We are not even among the 30% in this country who do not have proper access to shelter.

It is a blog post about life in wartime, with periodic missile attacks, but it is also a post about how we will go back to our “real” lives once the war ends. It is a blog about coping with unpredictable breaks in routine, but also what kind of routine I’ll take up when – and if – we come out the other side of this morass. It is a post about thinking through something as simple as dinner for two, making it up as I go, about taking my time to eat my meal, even if it was hurriedly prepared, even if the next missile attack is just around the corner. It is a post about being thankful, even when the eggs have gone cold and the toast hard, the siren loud and the booms close by. Don’t worry about us. We are the lucky ones.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)