I woke up around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 7th, on the couch, not because I’d fallen asleep watching TV, but because I hadn’t really slept at all. I’d been restless the entire night, uneasy for reasons I couldn’t quite name. It wasn’t like me, but I didn’t want to wake Mike, so I moved to the couch, hoping the quiet might calm my nerves.
Just 48 hours earlier, I had stocked the bomb shelter for the first time. After living in the house for about a hundred days, I figured we were finally settled, and it was time. I packed water, snacks, flashlights, passports, and a survival backpack. I added our extra blankets, sheets, power cords and a spare twin bed. I didn’t know what being in that room would really mean or what we’d need, so I followed the checklist from the embassy, adding a few things that brought me comfort, small touches to make the thought of a bomb shelter in our home feel a little less foreign, a little less frightening.
A few hours later, that decision would become the one thing I was grateful for.
Around dawn, I heard what I thought was an ambulance siren in the distance. Then another. And another. But it didn’t fade the way sirens usually do, it kept going.
I ran upstairs and asked, “What do rocket sirens sound like?”
Still half asleep, Mike mumbled, “No idea,” and rolled back over.
I went to the window, opened the shutters, and listened. The sound rose and fell for nearly two minutes before stopping.
I picked up my phone and there they were: alerts lighting up the screen. My stomach dropped.
“That’s the sirens,” I yelled, just as the first explosions thundered overhead. The air cracked with sound too close, too real, too impossible to comprehend.
We jumped up, calling for Mia, who was a floor above us. She bolted down the stairs as the cats followed, sensing the panic. We raced down three flights to Nic’s room, our designated shelter, and sealed ourselves inside.
For the next two hours, we sat there, hearts pounding, watching the rocket alert app and refreshing Twitter, trying to piece together what was happening. Each new update brought more confusion, more disbelief, more fear.
And through it all, one thought looped endlessly in my mind: Thank God Carson is in Bulgaria for soccer. He will survive this.
We were about 85 kilometers north of Gaza, just outside the “envelope.” In the days that followed, we would learn that none of the rockets had reached our area and that the terrorists had not made it beyond the border. But in those first hours, long, breathless, and uncertain that single thought was my anchor.
Rocket Alert App
Carson began hearing snippets of news before his first game, word spreading among players that Israel was under attack. Around 8:45 a.m., just as we were cleared to leave the shelter for the first time, his message came through: “Mom, what’s going on?”
Before that, our texts had been ordinary, me wishing him luck, telling him to enjoy Sofia, reminding him to have fun. I didn’t want to burden him with our fear. I wanted one of us to have a normal morning.
But as the sirens continued and the headlines began to unfold, “normal” disappeared.
That morning was the line between life before and life after the moment when comfort gave way to vigilance, when home became both refuge and reminder.
And from that day forward, uncertainty became our new reality.