Our father-in-law of blessed memory used to say this about children; petit, petit souci, grand, grand soucis.
Apart from confirming the fact he was French, it also confirms that he was a very wise man.
Roughly translated our father-in-law saying is this:
Small, small worries.
Big, big worries.
Our youngest, Lou, just returned from summer camp in Oregon.
At 11 he is not so small anymore but neither is he very big.
Our worries for him while he was away concerned mostly food, broken legs and bears. We are happy to report that they were all unfounded.
Just as Lou returned home his older brother by eight years Arieh, entered basic training for an elite infantry unit of the Israeli army.
We do not want to even articulate our worries for him. Suffice it to say we sometimes can’t sleep.
Indeed not sleeping is how we handled it when Arieh’s older brother was in the Gaza war.
It worked too, three weeks of not sleeping saw him return safe, sound and whole.
Perhaps it really isn’t fair to compare three weeks of generally having fun on the beach in Oregon with what will be six months of basic training hell. On the other hand it is.
No one is born a 19 year old beautiful young man, strong enough to take on evil and naive enough to try. We get there by baby steps, literally at first. Then before you know it, you are the grown up.
Funny thing is the fears don’t go away. The things we fear simply change. as children we had our parents check under our bed for monsters and startled at the bumps in the night. as young soldiers we searched out houses for the enemy and startled at bumps in the night. As young fathers we checked under the beds of our children and startled at bumps in the night.
Now as older fathers we sleep through most bumps, that is when we are not awake worrying.