I don't live there, but my heart does.
I also remember the scuds, watching them fly through the night, knowing that my aunt, my uncle, my cousins and several close childhood friends, were in those sealed rooms, wearing gas masks.
And now again, so many years later, those gas masks again.
Sitting in NJ, I cannot begin to comprehend what it is like to live with rockets being fired towards my home. But I do know that there are maybe 15 seconds between when the sirens go off in the towns in Israel and when the population needs to be in their bomb shelters.
Fifteen seconds. That's nothing.
I found myself counting 15 seconds all day long.
I now know that it takes me 75 seconds to buckle all of my kids into the car.
I now know that it takes me 62 seconds to walk from my door to my van with a 2-year-old.
I now know that it take me 40 seconds to open a box of diapers.
I now know that it takes me 33 seconds to find Ninjago on the On Demand channel.
And I now know that it takes me 16 seconds to run to the kitchen, pull a chair up to the wall and take the screaming smoke alarm down.
But 15 seconds? To save four kids? I can't even pretend to imagine.
So I sit here, instead, sad, worried, with a heavy heart - and feeling a little guilty too because we have not yet made the move to Israel - hoping and praying that all of Israel stays safe tonight and through however long this lasts.
And even though it may be ridiculous, I did commit to this diet, so here is what I ate today on the Whole30:
Breakfast: a few almonds, 2 hard boiled eggs.
Lunch: ground turkey, sauteed onions and canned tomato puree, aka faux sloppy joes.
Dinner: I had planned on making a roasted vegetable soup.
I roasted a cut up butternut squash, cut up carrots, quartered onions, quartered plum tomatoes and a head of garlic. The kitchen smelled fantastic, but sadly, no soup for me. I kind of ate most of the vegetables as soon as they came out of the oven. Roasted vegetables will do that to you - you taste one, just to make sure and before you can reach into a cabinet for the soup pot, they're all gone. Oh well. There are more important things than soup right now.