“I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be worried,” I said to my son Danny, who is 29 and on the autism spectrum, in a video call last week.
Toy Story aficionados will recognize what I said as a line from the original film, and the first two movies in the series are Danny’s favorite films. For the past 25 years, an important part of our Friday afternoon routine has been watching Toy Story 2 together.
Ordinarily, he doesn’t like to speak on the phone, but these weren’t ordinary times. He was in our apartment in Jerusalem, and I was in New York. I had gone on a vacation I had postponed since November 2023 to see old friends and family.
When I spoke about not being worried, I was lying, of course. We were both worried, and we had every reason to be.
There was another bit of dialogue, also from the first Toy Story, that I could have quoted to him: When Buzz and Woody are stranded in a gas station, Buzz says, “This is no time to panic,” and Woody responds, “This is a perfect time to panic!”
Separated during the Israel-Iran War
Even though Danny was as safe as anyone in Israel can be right now, in an apartment with his father and brother, right next to a bomb shelter, our separation made it a perfect time for us to panic.
He had spent the previous night awakening over and over to the sound of deafening bombs, a sound he knew from the previous Iranian attacks, the ones in April 2024 (during which he was with me and I persuaded him to come out from under the covers and run to the shelter) and in October 2024, where he was at the therapeutic village in central Israel where he lives during the week.
He’s had almost two years of running to bomb shelters at fairly regular intervals to prepare him for this, but it’s still difficult. He has always been afraid of loud noises, and since the war began, about 20% of his conversation has been requests for reassurance that noises can’t hurt him, because he’s a tough guy. And he is a tough guy. But in the past, I was there for him, and now I’m not.
IF I NEEDED a further sign of how deeply upset he was, he refused, after our video chat – for the first time – to watch Toy Story 2.
It’s a sickening feeling to be separated from him at a time like this, not because I can do anything to protect him that the people around him can’t, but because our bond is so strong.
Even if I don’t see him every day, it comforts him to know I’m at home. I hesitated so long before taking this trip, and went mainly because several elderly relatives are not well, and I wanted to see them one last time. I certainly didn’t expect to be stranded abroad.
“When are you coming back, Ima [Mom]?” Danny asked in that first conversation – and after we spoke, friends and relatives had to dissuade me from taking a plane to Cyprus and trying to swim back to Israel.
I’m on the El Al list for emergency flights home and I have contacted the Israeli government and the airline to let them know about Danny. Every day, I seriously consider defying government warnings by trying to go home via Larnaca and a boat or by flying to Amman, Jordan. Every time I read that there was a new missile attack that sent Danny fleeing to a bomb shelter, my heart sinks.
MY FRIENDS in the US have been beyond great and I have received many invitations to stay as long as I need to, which has been comforting. I count my blessings that I have not had to deplete my savings staying in a pricey hotel.
Sometimes, though, I have felt as if I’m on a different planet from people in America. Very few have asked about the details of our lives during the war – for example, whether we have a safe room or a bomb shelter, or how long we have to get to safety once an alarm is sounded. I think that most Americans simply don’t comprehend what we have been going through.
For a few, this lack of comprehension seems to have frozen their empathy. Some have tried to express sympathy in a circuitous way, by talking at length about how President Donald Trump has transformed America for the worse and how threatened they feel.
While I am no fan of the US president and did not vote for him, it seems to me that as badly as many I have spoken to feel things are going in America right now, if they or their children had to run to a bomb shelter – even one time – it would dwarf all the problems they currently lament.
But many seem determined to see America in 2025 as the most hopeless, politically ravaged nation on Earth and can’t seem to absorb the fact that it could be much worse.
I have tried to explain to them that what a really terrible government looks like is Hamas in Gaza, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, where people who protest are executed – and, in the case of Gaza, civilians are not allowed to take shelter in the 800-kilometer-long tunnel network during this war. No one has said much in response.
After every such conversation (and sometimes during) I have checked my phone to see whether there were missile sirens where Danny lives – he returned to his village two days after the war began – and if there had been, I struggled to maintain my composure.
A FEW things have cheered me up recently, and I cling to them when I feel helpless over being stranded here. One is that my younger son called me immediately after the first Iranian barrage to ask just what Danny likes for breakfast and to find out what else he could cook to spoil his brother. Another is that my neighbors have texted me to tell me how much Danny, who loves to chat, cheered up people in the shelter.
Finally, the staff of Danny’s village have unselfishly given up their own days off and time with their families to help the residents, all of whom are on the autism spectrum.
Following the first missile attack, three staff members who were not on duty showed up, without even being asked, carrying sleeping bags. Working hard, they made the basement bomb shelters suitable for sleeping, and now most residents are slumbering on mattresses in the shelter each night.
They may be scared by the booms, but they are safe. As much as possible, my son and his friends are able to maintain their usual routine of arts and carpentry workshops. When I think of the staff’s devotion, it brings tears to my eyes.
I find myself fighting back tears a lot lately. At one point during this trip, I flew to Detroit to see family, and an older airport baggage handler sang soul music to those waiting in line. I requested Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
As he sang, “It’s been a long/ A long time coming, but I know/ A change gon’ come,” he looked surprised at first when I started sobbing, but then he nodded and I felt the sympathy in his expression.
I only hope the change in the Middle East can come quickly enough for me to be sitting beside Danny watching Toy Story 2 next weekend, and that we will be back together, “To infinity and beyond.”