But Teenage Daughter has completed three months basic training in the Israeli Army and graduated last week.
This is an especially big moment for her because;
1. She wasn’t a keen participant in our ‘Aliyah Dream’. We had to drag her out of our house in the UK, as she clung onto her mattress screaming obscenities about ‘ruining her life’, ‘worst parents in the world’ and ‘never getting on the plane’.
2. She didn’t speak a word of Hebrew until 6 months ago. Except swear words.
3. She’s whats known as ‘feisty’ and not great with being told what to do. Which is kind of tricky in the Army. They seem to like giving people orders. We heard that if you don’t do what you’re told, they send you to Army prison.
When she enlisted, and we sent her off with a wave, it was entirely with the expectation that we’d see her the next day. We imagined her commander would call us to pick her up, as they couldn’t handle her. Or tell us that she’d been army imprisoned. We heard she came close to prison a few times.
Apparently, ‘leave me alooooone’, is not the correct response when being woken at 4am. And telling your Commander that you’re ‘not cleaning the toilet, can’t you pay someone to do it?’ is also not advisable.
Her daily panic attack phone calls gradually diminished. It had been slightly disconcerting listening to heavy breathing for an hour every day. I thought I had a new admirer. I got into the habit of taking the phone into the work toilet, so I could repeat my mantra to her ….’Come on! I’ve told you. Breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth’.
I got some weird looks when I came back into the office and realized some of my colleagues had been in the other cubicles.
So, you can imagine our complete shock, delight, when three months down the line we were attending her graduation.
The day arrived, and we had planned ahead. We had taken enough food to feed an Army (boom, boom!). As I’m not particularly mobile, due to a broken ankle issue, Daughter had thoughtfully arranged disabled parking for us. Fabulous.
But we still needed to access the base. Upon arrival, we came across a queue of cars waiting to enter. The queue wasn’t moving. As Israelis don’t seem to understand the concept of waiting, they had given up. And decided to leave their cars where they were. In the middle of the access road. Blocking the entrance.
This appeared to be entirely normal. As cars were left abandoned and hapharzardly strewn across the road, it meant that disabled people who Can’t Blummin’ Walk had to abandon their car 17 miles down the road, and hobble.
The hobbling was progressing well, albeit slowly, until we hit a problem. A staircase. With 20 sets of stairs. Each with 30 steps. It wasn’t just soldiers who had to complete basic training. If you wanted to see your soldier graduate, you were forced to complete your own assault course. Husband sprinted to the top before you could say ‘Hup – two, three, four’ (in Hebrew), and left my Mum and I gazing upwards in despair.
By the time we reached the top of Kilimanstairo, there weren’t that many spare seats left around the stadium. We spied some old Army veterans with walking sticks, so we pushed them out the way, asked politely if we could sit with them.
Our priority was to get our picnic out and show off the food we’d brought. Disappointingly, we were swiftly thrown out of the ‘Who brought the best food to your childs’ army graduation’ competition at an early stage, by a French family in front of us, who had people gasping in admiration at their pain aux chocolats.
My Mum is hard of hearing (totes hilarious), and was concerned that her hearing loss may lead to her missing some of the proceedings. This meant no one around her was permitted to speak in case she couldn’t hear. But none of the large Jewish families around us had got the memo.
I pointed out there was little point in her hearing the speeches, as they were in Hebrew, not a language she is familiar with, but by that point, she had already got into a frenetic elbow fight with the young soldiers next to her, who were cheering on their friends.
She continued to attempt to control the noise level with loud shushing at the people whispering in front of her. They ignored her, so her shushing developed into shrill hissing, interspersed with ‘be quiet!’. As she continued to be ignored, it culminated in a violent yelp of ‘oh my god, I’m gonna kill you if you don’t shut up!’
That got their attention. Together with the attention of several Army officers who suddenly surrounded around us pointing Uzi sub machine guns and pistols. Everyone jumped out the seat they had previously trampled on people to secure. I heard that some people even pushed over some old Army veterans. Disgusting.
Mum didn’t seem too bothered about hearing the speeches after that.
