There’s a “Thing”

We work hard to help our children communicate…and sometimes, we just plain…fail.

I’m sitting at the dining room table. Everyone else is fast asleep, even Choco the bird and Simba the dog. I heard footsteps upstairs – heavy ones. Davidi is away at school; Shmulik now lives downstairs with his wife. Without much work, I can easily know that the footsteps in the heavy boots are Elie’s.

He came down and went straight for the keys. “Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says as he begins to open the front door; realizes it is locked, and fumbles to open it.

“Where are you going?” I ask – gently and without pressure; really more out of curiosity.

As the door opens and he begins to walk through, I have no idea where or why he is going, other than his calling out, “there’s a thing.” And out he goes, already speaking into his beeper to confirm he’s on his way. By a thing, I assume he means some emergency – hopefully nothing more than a car accident, and hopefully not even that. He’s not on-call tonight, so whatever the “thing” is, his friend must have thought they might need more help and called Elie.

I guess I’ll hear when he comes back what the “thing” was. But as I sit here, I’m wondering why deep down inside, I’m not really feeling anything> I’m not scared, not panicked, not nervous. What is wrong with me? Have I gotten used to this? Am I just too tired (I’m still working to finish a document and it’s past midnight)?

Maybe I’ve finally forgotten that there is a normal beyond the abnormal that has become our lives here? I don’t have the answers and I still have to finish one more page before I sleep so for now, I’ll just hope that everyone at Elie’s “thing” is okay, that Elie stays safe and comes home soon.

I guess when a “thing” happens, this wonderful sense of nothingness is the best you can hope for.

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