I don’t know how long that humiliation lasted. Ten minutes. Maybe less. At some point, I began to cry. I hadn’t cried since that language test. Twenty years. Not that there hadn’t been reasons. My heart was broken at least three times. I wasn’t accepted into the military unit I wanted to join. My grandmother died. Dikla lost by five votes. Not a single tear.
And suddenly, out of the blue, in the middle of the parking area. Alone, betrayed, clutching a side mirror.
Luckily for me, a neighbor finally came out to throw her garbage into the bin. I called to her and she got Dikla, who somehow managed to push me into the backseat of the car and take me to the emergency room. Later, I did physical therapy for three months. I learned a series of preventive exercises, and also that each vertebra of the spine has a number.
But to this very day, I haven’t forgiven my body.
It’s so difficult to build trust after it has been betrayed. When was the last time you had a broken heart?
I can’t write it. I shouldn’t. But I have to.
We took Shira to the boarding school at Sde Boker.
Her suitcases were in the trunk and she was in the backseat with her earbuds. I couldn’t catch a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror. But I kept trying.
Dikla and I were silent. We both knew that every sentence spoken now might be interpreted as an accusation.
I remembered our drive from the maternity hospital, sixteen years ago. It was pouring. I drove slowly, people honked. I didn’t care. In the backseat—our first daughter, wrapped in a blanket. So small. The rain stopped when we reached our street. The wipers kept working. We sat in the car for a few seconds. We didn’t speak.
We had the feeling that when we stepped out of the car, we would be stepping into a totally different life.
Of Shira’s first year, I remember only her. Writing didn’t interest me. Teaching didn’t interest me. I wanted to be her father all the time. And she wanted to be my daughter. She wanted to be held in my arms. On my shoulders. She wanted to be hugged. Kissed. Rocked. When she was a bit older, she used to clutch my waist in desperation when I went to work and ran to me when I came home as if we hadn’t seen each other for a week. She would put her small hand in my large one even if we were only going from the living room to the kitchen. I told people: From the day she was born I stopped being sad. I told myself: The wandering is over. Until a few years ago, along with the high-speed metamorphosis from little girl to teenager, she began to cut herself off from me. All at once, there were no more words of love. Or hugs. All at once, she didn’t want to talk to me. Spend time with me. Do her homework with me. All at once, she had this enormous anger about a list of wrongs committed against her, first and foremost among them that we judge her all the time and don’t accept her as she is. Welcome to adolescence, people with experience nodded at me sympathetically. But I went through several years feeling like a man who had been tossed away. And then, just as the storm was dying down a bit and she was even doing better in school, she told us that she wanted to register in Sde Boker for high school. A residential high school in the desert. Apparently without our knowledge, she had already attended their open house, where she met a few girls she clicked with immediately.
We drove down there, Dikla and I, to Sde Boker. To have a look around. I hoped we’d be disappointed. But at the end of our visit, I had to admit to myself and to Dikla that I completely understood what Shira saw in the place. Open spaces. The feeling there is that it’s all open spaces. Totally unlike her high school here, which looks like a prison and treats its students like prisoners. Besides, the latest graduating class had written quotes from Meir Ariel songs on the walls of the dormitories as a parting gift. How can you not like a place that welcomes you with “And it’s all about drinking something cold in the middle of the desert”?
When we came back from Sde Boker, we sat on the balcony to talk. I mean, she and Dikla talked and I mostly listened and thought: How beautifully she expresses herself. And how smart she is. And why haven’t we been able to gain her trust?
Later, Dikla went to bed and only I, my daughter, and the mosquitoes remained.
So what do you say, Dad? she asked.
I wanted to tell her that it was too soon for me. I wanted to tell her that we had stopped arguing only a few months ago and I wanted to enjoy this golden age a bit more before she went. I wanted to tell her that we hadn’t been careful enough with her and that I was sorry.
But instead, I said: I trust you, little girl. If you feel you’d be happier there—go for it.
Thank you, Daddy, she said. And for the first time in four years, she hugged me.
A quick hug. Hesitant. Reserved.
