The Time Between

There’s no handbook for what comes after the world cracks open, just a thousand small decisions you make on instinct. The time between October 7 and November 3 was like living in a suspended breath. We weren’t in immediate danger, but we weren’t safe either. Every day carried both gratitude and dread.

The first week after the attacks was chaos wrapped in silence. The news was unbearable, the alerts nonstop, and every conversation started and ended with the same question: Are you leaving?

When the U.S. Missions issued Authorized Departure (AD) a few days later, we thought maybe there was a plan for everyone. But we soon learned that DOD families weren’t included. We weren’t funded by the Department of State; we were technically separate.

So while our friends at the Embassy began to evacuate on official flights, we, along with a handful of other military families stayed behind, watching as the American flag convoys rolled out and the skies filled with planes we weren’t allowed to board.

Some families managed to leave through the Allenby Crossing into Jordan, piecing together complicated exit routes. The U.S. Mission in Jordan stepped up in extraordinary ways that week, coordinating where they could, finding safe routes, and offering help even though we weren’t officially “theirs.”

Meanwhile, those of us who stayed found ourselves trying to keep busy, anything to feel useful.

The Embassy’s consular team in Tel Aviv was down to a skeleton crew, working around the clock to evacuate stranded Americans, tourists, Christian groups, volunteers, and ministry teams who had been visiting the Holy Land.

When the call went out for volunteers, I said yes.

We spent long hours at Ben Gurion Airport and the port in Haifa, helping process Americans who needed to get out. We helped them board El Al flights (the only airline still flying) or emergency ships bound for Cyprus.

It was surreal guiding strangers to safety while not knowing when or how we’d leave ourselves.

At home, life had shrunk to the space between sirens.

We were in the bomb shelter multiple times a day, for 10 minutes at a time, long enough to wait for the all-clear, long enough to think about what you’d grab if the next siren didn’t end. We had curfews at night and were told not to drive after dark.

Even simple things, like going to the grocery store became logistical plans. Only shops with mamads (reinforced safe rooms) were allowed to operate, so every errand required strategy: How far is the nearest shelter? Do I have time to make it? Mike said I was being ridiculous planning my routes like this.

During our first pizza community night, we also celebrated Mia’s 13th birthday. I can’t even remember exactly what happened with this cake, but I’ll never forget the candle.

The only one we had in the house was a small prayer candle we’d brought back from our visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, from the bundle we’d lit for hope and protection just weeks earlier on October 1, 2023.

We laughed as we stuck it into the cake and lit it, huddled together with friends, cats, and half-eaten pizza boxes, the air still thick with tension and sirens outside. It wasn’t the birthday she imagined, we were going to have a who done it party and solve a murder mystery, but in its own strange, sacred way, it was perfect.

There, in the middle of a war, with a prayer candle for a birthday wish surrounded by friends from across the world, Germany and Korea, we found a small piece of peace.

In the next week, twice, while driving for groceries, I had to pull over, jump out, and hit the ground as rockets were intercepted overhead. The Iron Dome was visible that day, streaks of light cutting through the sky, explosions above us. After that, the IDF moved a launcher closer to our neighborhood, so every time the alerts went off, we could hear the thump of outgoing fire followed by the echo of impact. I explain it similar to the canon scene in Mary Poppins. Everything shakes, you need to hold your vases.

The sound meant safety, but it also meant you never forgot the reason it existed.

Every Friday morning, our phones buzzed with “War Shabbat Rules”, safety reminders about where to shelter and when. During Shabbat, the country went quiet. Then, at sunset on Saturday, the silence broke with an avalanche of news updates, all the things that had happened while the world stood still for a day of rest.

In those moments, I began to understand Judaism and Shabbat not as rituals, but as resilience, a practice of stillness even when the world is on fire.

Our international TLS school program had around 10 families, but only four of us were still in Israel after October 7. Everyone else had left for the Sukkot holiday and was stranded abroad, unable to return. One American colleague wasn’t allowed back until June 2024 just to retrieve her belongings.

So, the few of us who stayed clung to each other.

The American Embassy leadership was incredible, our Chief of Mission (COM) held regular briefings for the handful of families who remained. On Wednesdays, after each update, our little group would gather at our house for pizza night. We’d debrief, reassure each other, and share stories from our different corners of Tel Aviv.

I’ll never forget those nights.

Every Wednesday, without fail, the sirens would interrupt dinner, and we’d all pile into the bomb shelter, thirteen people, three countries, and two cats, the cats always followed us. The little kids from our German friends were really struggling with these bomb shelter rituals, but I think it was a little better with my older kids in there with them. I hope so anyway. We had some good conversations and they were still working on their English.

The next night was the men’s turn, “Boys’ Night” at the Czech officer’s apartment, where Mike and the others would unwind over cards or whiskey. They didn’t have personal shelters, only a communal one on the ground floor. When the sirens went off there, the entire building crowded together in that concrete space. Different languages, same fear.

We found small ways to stay “normal.”

One night, Mike was away and the sirens started while Mia was in the bathtub. She hadn’t heard them until it was almost too late. I ran from the shelter, two floors up, to find her sliding across our marble floor, dripping wet and half-laughing in panic, straight out of Risky Business. I threw my robe around her, and we ran, barefoot and breathless, down to the shelter. We laughed the whole way — the kind of laugh that comes when you’re too scared to cry.

By Halloween, we were all tired of being afraid.

A few of us decided to give the kids something to look forward to, so we met at the pool near the rec center and threw together a makeshift celebration. Everyone brought what they could a few decorations, leftover candy, and whatever costumes hadn’t been lost to the mail.

We hadn’t received mail since United stopped flying to Israel, so most of the Halloween packages, candy, costumes, decorations were stuck somewhere between New Jersey and nowhere. We laughed about it that night, not realizing we’d finally get those boxes delivered to Rome in May.

Mia and I went together, and for a few hours, it felt like we’d slipped back into normal life. The kids laughed, the parents smiled, and we tried to pretend the sirens didn’t exist. Of course, halfway through trick-or-treating, they did and we all shuffled into the shelter again, leaving all the fun on the ground in the grass.

That same night, a State Department promotion cable went out, and several of the families there had received the news. So inside that shelter surrounded by kids in costumes and the muffled thump of Iron Dome intercepts there were hugs, high-fives, and a few tears.

It was surreal and beautiful all at once.

That’s the thing about the people we were surrounded by they were the best of the best. Calm in chaos. Smart, selfless, steady. They worked impossible hours helping strangers, managing evacuations, comforting terrified travelers, holding diplomatic ground, all while being the emotional anchors for their own families.

That Halloween, under red alerts and flashlight glow, I realized something I’ll never forget: resilience isn’t built alone. It’s built in a community, even in a tight space.

Around Halloween, we got the call. I can not recall the exact date.

The U.S. Marine Corps was issuing PCS orders and for once, we had a choice. Canberra, Australia, or Rome, Italy.

It’s strange to think about making a life-changing decision in a war zone. We weighed the options, distance, stability, timing. Rome made sense. It was an American School on the same schedule as US schools and it was a 3 hour fight. I could write an entire story about that decision alone, the pros and cons, the midnight debates whispered over the hum of rocket alerts, but in the end, we chose Rome.

When I say it happened fast, I mean fast. We had official orders on November 1 and were on a plane November 3.

We celebrated Carsons 15th birthday! This cake was in better shape. I was able to order ice cream cake by this time. Which had always been his favorite.

In the weeks between Oct 7 and Nov 3, I made three separate trips to the vet for the cats’ travel health certificates, getting multiple each time, one for the US and one for the EU. Twice, I thought we were leaving, only to find we hadn’t made the cut for the evacuation flights. By the third visit, even the vet just smiled and shook his head.

When the final orders came, things got even more complicated. The vet couldn’t issue the export certificates, so Mike and I had to drive south toward Ashdod, near Tel Aviv, to apply for the paperwork in person.

I didn’t want to go, the locals told me, “It’s fine, the IDF will take care of you,” but “fine” had lost its meaning. Still, we needed that piece of paper. Without it, our cats couldn’t fly and leaving them wasn’t an option.

So we went 1 hour south, down roads lined with tension, into an office that felt impossibly normal amid the chaos. We got the papers. And I remember thinking, this is what survival looks like, doing the absurd, necessary things to keep your family whole, even when the world is unraveling. The israels were life as normal. This was not their first rodeo, but this was MINE and I was not excited to have this as a story in my kids life.

It wouldn’t be the last time I’d do crazy things to get our cats out of the Middle East.

But two days later, we were on a plane, three kids, two cats, two surfboards, and eight bags leaving Israel behind.

We were delivered to the airport in an armored convoy, a strange mix of relief and absurdity, families, pets, luggage, and exhaustion all crammed together like some surreal clown car. As we walked toward the gate, we passed the hostage posters lining the walls, and that’s when I finally broke.

I cried quietly, part grief, part gratitude, and a heavy ache of guilt. I was so profoundly thankful to be an American that day, to have a way out, to know my children were safe. But it was impossible to ignore the faces staring back at me, the mothers who couldn’t take their children to safety, the fathers who had stayed behind, the families who would never make this same walk to the gate.

At that moment, babies and children were still being held hostage in Gaza, and the weight of that truth sat in my chest like a stone. I carried it onto the plane with me, a silent reminder of how fragile safety really is, and how undeservedly lucky we were to be leaving at all.

As we lifted off, the sun rose over Israel, spilling light across the coastline. I looked out the window, whispered a prayer, and hoped for peace, for safety, for every family still trapped below and prayed no rockets would chase us into the sky.

That’s how we left: hearts heavy, grateful, mothers guilt and quietly holding our breath as the blue of the Mediterranean swallowed the land we’d called home.