When my phone rings at odd hours, like 7 a.m., my heartbeat takes off

 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000MYbrothers are soldiers.

I live in perpetual fear of the rumors.

They’re like icy bits of snow, blowing from phone to phone, swirling between buildings, among people huddled together in conversation, until they land, melting into freezing wet droplets on my shoulders, my face, my heart.

Gone are the days when I dismissed rumors as just that: rumors. On Simchas Torah we heard bits and pieces of bad news — terrorist infiltration, hundreds killed, soldiers kidnapped — and I immediately said, “Okay, let’s not get carried away here. None of this is possible. None of this could be true.”

And I was wrong. So wrong.

There were moments of relief. At the beginning of the war, when they said Hezbollah Radwan fighters had landed in the Golan heights, and it turned out to be a random group of paragliders, or when Pikud Ha’oref accidentally sent a message for everyone to go into their safe rooms and stay there until further notice.

There are rumors that are false, disappointment like daggers in my chest. “Not yet cleared for publication, but 34 hostages rescued and on their way to Sheba hospital.”

There are rumors that devastate: “Trucks from Shifa Hospital pulling up at the Shura military base where they identify the dead.” They are partially true; they contain two bodies of hostages, not truckloads.

I’m married with a family of my own; in the event of bad news I won’t get that ominous knock on my door that every soldier’s family fears. I’ll probably get a phone call from one of my parents.

When my phone rings at odd hours, like 7 a.m., my heartbeat takes off. It’s my father, needing the car I borrowed from him yesterday. It’s my daughter’s friend, wanting to walk with her to school. I try not to glare at her when she comes over to pick her up.

The day the rumors peak, we hear, “There’s bad news from Gaza… mass casualty event… catastrophic numbers… pray for our soldiers… unconfirmed reports… I won’t say anything until it’s official….”

The day the rumors peak, there are many khaki-green helicopters whirring overhead in the direction of the southern coast and back. I don’t point them out to my little boys as we walk home from school; instead I say a tefillah for the speedy recovery of whoever inside is being airlifted to a hospital. And I anxiously wonder, Is one of them Eli? He’s in Gaza.

The night the rumors peak, my mother is at my house. She’d been shopping, out for dinner, and is now washing the dishes in my sinks. I feel her out. How long has it been since she was home? Has anyone else been home this evening?

I flit around my apartment, not wanting to scare my mother, but willing her to go home in case the katzin ha’ir is knocking on the door of her dark and silent house. I need to know if the rumors are true. I need to know if the truth involves my brothers.

My husband once told me about that terrible helicopter crash in which 73 soldiers on their way to Lebanon were killed; his brother was in the army at the time. His mother paced the floor all night long waiting to hear if my brother-in-law had been on that helicopter. Baruch Hashem, he’d gone in via armored vehicle.

The night the rumors peak, I think of my mother-in-law and the terror she must have felt then.

The morning after, when I wake up at dawn and check my phone for messages or missed calls, I feel reassured that if I haven’t heard anything yet, it’s no one from my family.

I sink back into my pillow, wracked with guilt. It may not be someone from my family, but there are other people out there with tears flowing down their faces, with a gash in their heart, a hole in their family that can never be filled.

The headlines are difficult to read, six soldiers killed, another eight severely injured, when the explosives in the tunnel they were rigging exploded prematurely. But it’s not as ominous as the rumors made out.

My brother is out of Gaza now; he’s joining another brother up north, training for war with Hezbollah. Now my heart feels like the snowcapped peaks of the Hermon near where they’re stationed and my ears are pricked for words like “Lebanon,” “Har Dov,” “anti-tank missiles,” “foreign aircraft alert.”

Please, Hashem, keep it all quiet on the Northern front.

On every front.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 878)