Having a son who is a soldier is not easy. Having a son who is in a combat unit is even harder. Having a son "somewhere" on the border is a level beyond that.
David sent me this picture. I have to ask him why he took it and several others. He's got a tough schedule and has been away from home for longer periods of time. It's hard not to see him at least every other weekend. I miss him, hearing him speak with his brothers, smiling, laughing.
He feels so far away and I long for that simple moment when I can give him a hug. I ask him to send me pictures. Sometimes, he sends me one of him but usually, he sends me a picture of things around his area.
From the time I bought myself this amazing CANON camera, I realized that he loved taking pictures and has a steady hand and a talent for setting things up so nicely. Recently, he sent me this one.
There is the beautiful sun setting on the sea but my eyes come back again and again to the twisted wire in the corner. I can't explain why this image touches me...it's a combination of unimaginable beauty...a wonderful sunset on the Mediterranean Sea...and barbed wire...
What the image doesn't show is that behind this barbed wire, my son stands on guard. He is a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. He is named after a Holocaust survivor, his grandfather. Two of his older brothers, also combat soldiers in Israeli, bear the names of young men who did not survive.
I struggle to look at the sunset...and I see the barbed wire. Here in Israel, we use barbed wire as any nation does - to protect our borders...to prevent infiltration by land or sea. Each time I see it, my heart flutters just a bit. It is part of that collective memory that Jews have.
Once the Nazis put us behind barbed wire...not to keep us out, but to keep us in. Inside ghettos where hunger was forever a part of daily life; inside concentration camps, where death was everywhere. Inside the barbed wire, we lived set apart from a world of hatred. While all around us there was a world filled with light, we were starved, isolated, placed just out of reach.
Now we put ourselves behind barbed wire but the beauty is inside this land, the light, the life. Here, we protect ourselves from the hatred outside but live glorious lives. Food grows from the ground, fills our stores and homes.
That is Israel...here on this side. We look out at the world, at the beauty that is there but sometimes it is through the barbed wire we ourselves have placed around us. To keep them out. To protect our families.
On nearly every border, you can find it. It's almost as if we can't even enjoy a simple sunset without remembering. They are out there - planning and plotting. And we are here inside. Still able to look out and celebrate the simple joys of life, even if just a little of the wire slips into the picture to remind us.
David sent me so many other pictures. I'll post them at some point...likely when he isn't where he is now. For now, I'll post this one.
Beauty and the barbed wire.
David sent me this picture. I have to ask him why he took it and several others. He's got a tough schedule and has been away from home for longer periods of time. It's hard not to see him at least every other weekend. I miss him, hearing him speak with his brothers, smiling, laughing.
He feels so far away and I long for that simple moment when I can give him a hug. I ask him to send me pictures. Sometimes, he sends me one of him but usually, he sends me a picture of things around his area.
From the time I bought myself this amazing CANON camera, I realized that he loved taking pictures and has a steady hand and a talent for setting things up so nicely. Recently, he sent me this one.
There is the beautiful sun setting on the sea but my eyes come back again and again to the twisted wire in the corner. I can't explain why this image touches me...it's a combination of unimaginable beauty...a wonderful sunset on the Mediterranean Sea...and barbed wire...
What the image doesn't show is that behind this barbed wire, my son stands on guard. He is a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. He is named after a Holocaust survivor, his grandfather. Two of his older brothers, also combat soldiers in Israeli, bear the names of young men who did not survive.
I struggle to look at the sunset...and I see the barbed wire. Here in Israel, we use barbed wire as any nation does - to protect our borders...to prevent infiltration by land or sea. Each time I see it, my heart flutters just a bit. It is part of that collective memory that Jews have.
Once the Nazis put us behind barbed wire...not to keep us out, but to keep us in. Inside ghettos where hunger was forever a part of daily life; inside concentration camps, where death was everywhere. Inside the barbed wire, we lived set apart from a world of hatred. While all around us there was a world filled with light, we were starved, isolated, placed just out of reach.
Now we put ourselves behind barbed wire but the beauty is inside this land, the light, the life. Here, we protect ourselves from the hatred outside but live glorious lives. Food grows from the ground, fills our stores and homes.
That is Israel...here on this side. We look out at the world, at the beauty that is there but sometimes it is through the barbed wire we ourselves have placed around us. To keep them out. To protect our families.
On nearly every border, you can find it. It's almost as if we can't even enjoy a simple sunset without remembering. They are out there - planning and plotting. And we are here inside. Still able to look out and celebrate the simple joys of life, even if just a little of the wire slips into the picture to remind us.
David sent me so many other pictures. I'll post them at some point...likely when he isn't where he is now. For now, I'll post this one.
Beauty and the barbed wire.
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