When You Teach Your Kids to Travel

Today my friend quoted Elizabeth Stone to me. “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

This has never felt more true than in the last two weeks. These were the weeks that my 19 year old son left for his trip with Birthright to Israel. “Wait, you’re Jewish?” people ask me, and no, I can’t say that I am. And that follows with a long story about how I THOUGHT I was Jewish growing up on Fairfax, getting all my goldfish from Purim Festivals and seeing Rabbi Kramer speak at our church. ‘Church’ being the operative word here, turns out I’m not Jewish but when I got married (for the first time) Rabbi Kramer married us on two conditions: that a minister would not also be present and that we had already decided to raise our children in the Jewish faith. No problem, as my Jewish husband already had a daughter who was Jewish, so it was all set. Out came two more Jewish kids, Kati and Anthony Angelini. Yes, I’m still confused too, but Rabbi Kramer said!

So on July 1, 2014 Anthony Angelini spent five lovely days pretty much alone in New York City and had a great time. I have no details yet, but he lost, then found his phone, spent Fourth of July at the Statue of Liberty watching the fireworks and saw an amazing Shakespeare in the park, wherein the audience followed the actors throughout the park settings. A mother can handle this.

Then, the day the recent war broke out in Israel, he flew there. Yes he did. He landed in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, July 8. Breathe. The first day was pure denial all around. The first photo posted was of Anthony holding a kitten — I kid you not. I called his father and pleaded my case, and his father agreed that he should come home immediately. Anthony refused.

The next day I was greeted with this message: “Hi, don’t freak out. I’m required by law to tell you that I’m going to be okay. And I need to show your response to my supervisor. There were several missiles fired today near us and they just want to do some preventative maintenance to make sure that all the parents aren’t freaking out. But I’m going to be okay.”

“Don’t freak out. Required by law. Several missiles fired near us. Preventative maintenance.” The only part I understood was “don’t freak out.” I freaked out.

Then this Facebook post: “Pushed back by missile fire to the border of Syria where we can hear bombs going off from the Syrian Civil War offensive. Actually the safest place in Israel to be because the Syrians are too preoccupied with the shit going on there. The border is controlled by the UN but we may need to escape across border in to Lebanon and fly to Turkey. Just like us Jews, we’re always running away.”

Now, here is where we pause and I tell you that my son has been to temple three, maybe four times. No Hebrew school, no Bar Mitzvah, just some Passover dinners at his father’s parents’ house and only the cultural concept of being Jewish. And suddenly, he’s escaping across borders, fleeing from the homeland? Exodus?

I sent message after message: “Come home now. Take this off of Facebook, your grandmother is freaking out. Come home now. How can the Golan Heights be called ‘safe’?” Bless his little heart, he hung in there with me and stayed online and answered all my questions. But he wasn’t leaving.

Now, I trust my son. He is very smart and has travelled all over the world. So I think like a good mother and I ask, “How safe do you feel?” NOW I’ve got him!

He answered: “Safe-in-the-pool-at-my-4-star-hotel-eating-shwarma-under-the-stars-safe.” So, there was my answer. I shut up. A mother can handle this.

And like a good boy, he posted messages to me on Facebook every morning and every night, while I watched the news, calmed down my mother and tried to remember how to pray. The good news was that they were accompanied on this trip by members of the Israeli army. It’s ok, mom, they have AK 47s. And apparently, those keep missiles from landing on your head.

On day ten, when the trip was over he decided that, rather than hang out in Israel for another four days with his friend, he would head to Italy, where he would eventually meet up with his dad. Perfect, I thought. Safe at last.

So, he boarded a plan from Tel Aviv to Istanbul to Rome. And while he was in the air, a passenger plane over the Ukraine was shot down. This was the straw. It’s a terrifying, angry world out there. A mother just can’t handle this.

Now he is “safe” at his father’s vacation home somewhere near Mt. Vesuvius, which for my mother is anything BUT safe. His father got a great deal on the house because the entire town was destroyed by an earthquake, so they all just left. The Mayor called Californians. Hey, they’re USED to earthquakes, and so Anthony’s father, who is not only Jewish but born in Rome, bought a house. It’s probably still under construction, and Anthony speaks no Italian, and the house might be falling down the hill or an earthquake could happen any minute or Vesuvius could ERUPT but I’m sure he’s fine.

Now, I sit and wait until the end of the month, when Anthony flies from Rome to Istanbul to Tel Aviv to New York to California, a trip that will take 47.5 hours, not including transportation to and from airports. No idea what happens to his luggage or what happens in customs from country to country. No idea. I’m just his mother. A mother can handle this.

Written in July of 2014