Israel's Child

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
14 April '10
Posted before Shabbat

This isn't about Shmulik or Elie, Chaim or Yaakov and yet...it is about a child in Israel - one they all love.

My youngest daughter (if you've been reading this blog for a while, you met her here in A Candle and a Wave and A Child's Alarm) is learning something that I don't know how to translate - basically Medical Care, First Aid, Human Care or something like that - its the rudiments of first aid at a fourth grade level. She has a test today and so spoke of what she knows on the way to school.

"ABC" she said.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"Air waves, Breathing, and Circulation"

"They teach you that in English?" I asked her.

"No, but they tell us ABC because it isn't the same in Hebrew." Okay. It was cute and I went along with it as she spoke and then my mind stopped and I heard not the cute tone of her voice, that I love listening to, but the words. I asked her to explain it again and then asked if this was the teacher's explanation or hers.

"The teacher. He's really funny. He told us 'If a doctor says a patient doesn't have a pulse, but he does, what does that mean?' "

She giggled and then answered, "it means it's a bad doctor."

But it was the analogy that she told me before that stuck with me. This ABC thing is: "It's like a missile hitting a building," she explained. It took me a while to get the image and understand what she was saying...

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