Two Years

I'm copying this from my Facebook status and adding a bit to it because I like it! 2 years ago today (well, yesterday really) we embarked on the greatest adventure of our lives...2 years ago today we showed up at our friends' house after 16 hours of traveling with NO luggage (and Krazy wore women's pajamas courtesy of ElAl Airlines)...2 years ago today neither of my kids could speak a word of Hebrew...2 years ago today we didn't even know many of the people who are now such close friends...2 years ago today I didn't realize how much it physically hurts to miss people who I love who are so far away (yeah, yeah, I don't want to hear how it was my choice to move far away)...2 years ago today I was so excited about eating real Israeli schnitzel and now if I never saw a schnitzel again I probably wouldn't care (that is a big lie because I really do love schnitzel always and forever)...2 years ago today I would never have dreamed of letting my kid pee outside in public...2 years ago today Little only had 4 teeth...2 years ago today Krazy's Hebrew was just as bad as it is now...2 years ago today I was terrified of having to spend entire afternoons alone with my kids...2 years ago today I didn't have an MBA...2 years ago today we ate Burgers' Bar for dinner...2 years ago today I had no idea what Ra'anana even looked like...I could probably go on forever but I'm getting bored of this game! In case you didn't get it, today is our 2nd anniversary of being in Israel for a year.
What better way to celebrate it than by going to the mall for dinner with friends who were celebrating their one-year anniversary of being here! As always, we stopped at the entrance to the garage for the guard to check the trunk of our car. As we were driving away to find parking, Big and I had this conversation:
Big: why do some people bring missiles into the mall?
Me: what?
Big: why do some people bring missiles into the mall?
Me: what are you talking about? no one brings missiles into the mall!
Big: yeah, some people do.
Me: who told you that?
Big: my dad. he said that's why they have to check our trunk. for missiles.
Me: (thinking, oh crap, what am I supposed to say now?) there are some bad people who might try to bring missiles into a mall, but that's why they check the trunks.
Big: did they think we might be bad people?
Me: no, there are no bad people at the mall in Ra'anana
Big: then why did they check our trunk?
Me: look over there, do you think we can fit into that small parking spot?
Way to change the subject! And, later Krazy denied that he ever said that to Simon. The joys of living in the Middle East! I wish my kids didn't have to live in a world where it's necessary to open our trunk every time we go into a parking garage and to walk through metal detectors and have our bags checked when we go to the supermarket. I wish Big didn't have to spend 10 minutes in his pre-school's bomb shelter as part of a nationwide drill a couple of weeks ago. But, sometimes I still feel safer here where we know who/what the threat is and we know that it is real and that the army/police/goverment is doing everything it can to keep us safe. And most of the time I don't think about it at all because daily life here is really no different from daily life in America.