“This is why I joined the army. This is why we went through all of those miluim over the years”

It’s a miracle the hamster died.

I’d gotten used to Og (short for the Hebrew oger and ironically a giant’s name for a tiny rodent). The brown ball of fur with a black stripe down his back slept most of the day in the corner of his little cage, half-buried in wood shavings. He practiced acrobatics when he smelled food coming, climbing to the ceiling of his cage, swinging from one paw, and the sudden whir of his plastic wheel would interrupt the late-night conversations that my husband and I waited for all day, making us both laugh.

Now, after bedtime, the house is silent, except for the hum of distant warplanes and occasional dull booms.

In the early afternoon of Simchas Torah, my husband switched his Shabbos clothes for army green. He laced up his boots while I rocked our six-week-old in the corner of the bedroom. “This is why I joined the army.” He looked up at me and smiled. “This is why we went through all of those miluim over the years.” He’s right. I have also been slowly readying myself for this war for the last 15 years. Or rather, Hashem has been preparing me.

Fifteen years ago, three months after our oldest child was born, my husband enlisted in the IDF for six months. He was gone every week from early Sunday morning until late Friday morning. It was stressful and lonely, but I knew it would end. I counted down the months, the weeks, the days, until his training would be over and life could go back to normal.