Those Sirens

Random flowers in Israel

This war has some Israelis staying home more than usual. Others go about their lives, hardly deterred lest a siren suggest they move to a bomb shelter. Most comply with the sirens. Although we have had few casualities, relatively, nobody wants to be one. 

But people who have lived here for decades, maybe their whole lives are out swimming at the clubs, traveling to see friends in other cities, even touring, seemingly oblivious to the possibility that missiles might be at their doorstep in a flash and they have a ten minute warning. Is all. 

These are tough people. I don't think the Iranians had any idea.

Missiles give me pause, being new here. 

And that pause, you should know, is a complete and total bummer to someone like me who, as s a rule, likes to get out and about. 

I walk everywhere and if it is too far to walk will hop a bus, taxi or train, usually to the beach. But there are no bomb shelters at the beaches, and the beach is closed. (Just saying, FD and I have Israeli drivers licenses, we can and do rent a car when we feel the need, usually to go someplace in a hurry (a funeral, once, not war related) or someplace inconvenient to public trans. 

Since the war began, however, although FD gets around on his bike, I just walk and don't walk more than ten minutes from home. Sometimes I'll go ten minutes east, turn back, walk ten minutes west, turn back, south, then north. I want to be within a ten minute walk to a bomb shelter. We get a ten minute warning to get inside. 

Only once did I break the rule, went out on foot with FD to shop for Passover, the siren goes off on our phone, then we hear it in the sky. No public shelter to be found.  Not a good feeling. 

Even the birds make themselves scarce. 

We knocked on somebody's door, not the worst idea. People let strangers into their shelter during a siren. This time, however, our would-be hosts had already locked themselves down, couldn't hear us through the steel door of their mamad We watched the skis under a carport. Saw nothing. Waited for the all clear. Went home.

Did that traumatize us? It traumatized me, I'm still talking about it.  Do I have PTSD? I'm not sure.

Anyway, sometimes I find myself depressed about the war, that it is going on so long, it feels, and I know that much of the depression is cabin fever, not getting out much, no socializing with friends (although there's no reason not to, really, they all have shelters). I take these short walk, back and forth within perimeters I set for myself. Is this wartime OCD? Oh, yeah. But  Home Security would approve. And like most OCD symptoms, it is functional. 

What's really functional is doing what I would tell any client to do when I get that down feeling that descends and rests on my head, feels like a new self took over where my old, happy, cheerful self used to live. Using the tools I've spent 40 years teaching at work literally makes the blues go away. (There is a song in that, people). 

My top three beat depression hacks work every time . I must be a genius. (smiley face here). 

(1) Music, 

(2) Exercise,

(3) Music and Exercise together. 

Today I chose door number three and it worked like a charm. My Apple HEALTH app tells me that I walked 5,341 steps, which isn't enough but it isn't nothing and I stayed within my self-imposed perimeters. As I walked I listened to Israeli songs from Eurovision contests going back to 1975. Those were great songs! 

I came home in a great mood. 

Am sharing a picture I took. I see a hedge of flowers or a flowering bush every ten feet (3 meters) or so. They call my city the original Gan Eden, Paradise. I cannot argue.   

Oh, and fruit trees, lemons and oranges drop to the sidewalk. I'll have to get you a pic of those.

To the end to the war! To resilience! To happiness!

Oh, here's a link to my favorite Israeli Eurovision entry, Liora (not Liora Yitzchaki) singing Amen in 1995: 

https://youtu.be/LJkGfeletR0?si=B_HC0Uti3N4f8uMr

therapydoc