At 7:30am, there are no children on the bus.

Because there is no school. There is only “the situation” — that polite, almost apologetic phrase we use so we don’t have to say the words war and Iran before coffee, like animals.

So the bus carries only adults.

Adults with errands. Adults with obligations. Adults performing that very specific Israeli art form: continuing as if nothing is happening while everything is happening.

You can tell a lot about a person from what they are holding at 7:30 during a war.

A woman has coriander, tomatoes, something green and optimistic — ingredients that assume we’ll still be here for lunch.

A man clutches a pharmacy bag as if it contains not medication but a legally binding promise that he personally will survive.

Someone holds a white bakery box with reverence usually reserved for newborns and ceasefires.

Softness, apparently, is still negotiable.

Just the ones expected to continue.

The siren does not arrive.

It cuts through the bus mid-thought, mid-breath, mid-existential denial.

There’s the pre-warning — that little polite ahem before the sky loses its mind — and then the full performance.

One........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)