Take Two   

In the days that became months that feel like years since I last wrote about our national counting, so much has happened, yet nothing has changed. Hostages rescued. Beeper attacks. Captive bodies recovered. Sinwar dead. Our kidnapped brothers and sisters still brutally impounded in Gaza. I so often wanted to write a sequel, to process my sentiments and share this experience, but I couldn’t bring myself to write it while we are still counting…  because would I then need to write a third? A fourth? This was an enumeration I would not contemplate.

Until I couldn’t hold it in any longer. It must be noted, discussed, broadcast. Wearing the count of each war-day’s number is keeping track of how many days and nights the hostages have been confined and captive, and noting each morning that our world has changed. This small act has become part of me. It is in my morning routine. Wake, wash, dress, affix. Each day, every day. It is a part of me now.

Some months in, I began appending the word “Day” to the counted number, which seemed to attract more people’s attention. What days are you counting? Why is there a number on your shirt? What is Day 178? I have a prepared answer, formulated with intent and focus after some bungled utterances when I was caught off guard. Now it’s well memorized and quickly available:  It’s how many days Israeli and American hostages have been held captive by Hamas. (I added “American” to help make a connection to my inquirer here in the US; perhaps they would care more if it felt closer to home.) This retort mostly surprises my audiences, not just because it’s an unexpected response, but because the number is always so high: 147, 233, 312, 399. Has it been that many days? I nod yes, saddened by the world’s oblivion.

By now, I’ve been questioned by many. One of the first was a Filipino cashier who waited until he finished checking me out to ask its significance, stopping what he was doing to make direct eye contact and give me his full attention. I felt that he already knew. The Black phlebotomist with a deep, Southern drawl asked inquisitively, as she prepped my arm for a routine blood draw. She likely expected a trite answer, but instead launched a conversation about Hamas’s terrorism, of which she knew nothing. The young receptionist who sees me regularly, and finally greeted me one morning with, “I’ve been meaning to ask….” A middle-aged doctor, who outed her Jewishness by commiserating on the misaligned world sympathy and egregious collegiate behavior. One smartly dressed woman stopped me to quip about a kindergarten project being stuck to me, but quickly hushed and sorrowed as I explained. She shared that she was Jewish, too, and had packed bags of supplies in her Temple to send to Israel.