Dominos and DNA

It's like dominoes set in a line. Touch the first one and all the rest begin to fall.

When you think about the new year, can you not think about the last? And when you consider the path that carried you here, do the details not lead you back to where you grew up? It’s impossible to think about the shape of your childhood without thinking about your parents, just as it’s impossible to think about their parents without considering your own DNA.

My son, Tully, wanted to know details about my father—an Israeli only child, born in 1926.

I knew my father’s Hebrew name, and therefore I knew his father’s. His mother’s name, however, I wasn’t sure of until yesterday. So I opened the few papers I had saved in my mother’s old dresser drawer. Her bedroom furniture is now in the office upstairs. I found my father’s old passport and the few photographs I'd collected from his apartment in Ashkelon after he died. I also took out the stack of passports from my mother’s house—I guess that makes me still snooping in her drawers when she’s not around.

We counted together: she had traveled to Israel thirty-one times. I have her little red Pinkas Chaver that she kept with her passports. She first crossed by boat from Canada in 1955 and lived here for a year. On her visits, she loved to share the funny, adventurous stories of that time with my children.

Every day since October 7, I have asked myself: why am I still living in Israel? It will soon be another full year of questioning.