Sonshine

It doesn’t matter how old a son is. Even when he is big and strong, he is always a small boy for his mother. 

–Unknown

You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons, and if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your eyes.

–Walter M. Schirra, Jr.

The years will rush by, and one day you will be watching your son as a man, and feeling incredibly proud that he is caring, safe, making a contribution, and hopefully going far beyond you in the scope of his life.
–Steve Biddulph

 וַיֹּאמֶר קַח-נָא אֶת-בִּנְךָ אֶת-יְחִידְךָ אֲשֶׁר-אָהַבְתָּ, אֶת-יִצְחָק, וְלֶךְ-לְךָ, אֶל-אֶרֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּה; וְהַעֲלֵהוּ שָׁם, לְעֹלָה, עַל אַחַד הֶהָרִים, אֲשֶׁר אֹמַר אֵלֶיךָ. 
And He said: 'Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell you of.'
–Genesis 22:2

שְׁמַע בְּנִי, מוּסַר אָבִיךָ; וְאַל-תִּטֹּשׁ, תּוֹרַת אִמֶּך
Hear, my son, the instruction of your father, and forsake not the teaching of your mother.
–Proverbs 1:8 

I don't know how to describe the feeling I get when I see one of my sons – the sons I gave birth to, the sons I nursed at my breast, the sons whose diapers I changed and sent to nursery school even when they refused to get out of bed; to whom I sang 'You are my Sunshine' and 'Patty Cake' for hours on end, the sons whose Bar Mitzvah ceremonies I cried through, the son who wouldn't eat olives and the one who liked peas, who got bullied, who ran away from the school bus, who played prank jokes on each other, whose laughter still echoes in my home – with a Kevlar vest and a very big gun that has sights and a special handle. 

It's a surrealistic feeling, a disbelief in the time that has passed since those diapers were changed. It's a feeling of dismay, anxiety, fright, alarm, and anguish. It is not something I wanted my boys to ever have to do. It's not what I had wanted in their future. 
It's a punch in the stomach.

I taught them to be thoughtful of others, kind, generous, helpful. And they are!! They wash my floor, bake cake, bring presents when they visit.  They play with kids, they watch silly TV shows, they do the laundry and make pancakes. 
They help each other.
(When one soldier son told his soldier brother that he needed a blanket, the soldier brother, whose unit had just received a donation of sleeping bags (more than they could use), found another soldier (someone else's son, and, coincidentally, a friend of my third son) who was going to Beer Sheva to bring one of the bags to our home. When the very good-looking mustachioed soldier knocked on my door and handed me the bag ("'A' asked me to give this to you," he said and left before I could blink my eyes), two thoughts went through my mind simultaneously: 'A remembered! He's such a good boy' and 'What a people we have who go out of their way to help one another.' Another thought that came slightly later was 'but what's with the mustaches?'*)

Mixed with the fear and anxiety, however, there is an overwhelming feeling of love and pride. 
They defend their Nation. 

I didn't come to Israel so my sons could one day serve in its army. I came to build and plant and learn and grow. And I did. I taught my sons and daughters to build and to plant and to learn and to grow also. And they do. 

We are a grieving nation, a nation mourning its losses, disturbed over the world's reaction, concerned about the growing global antisemitism. We are broken but not shattered. We are wounded but more determined than ever. Determined to rebuild, to replant, to learn and to grow. Because that's who we are. 

As my son, at home on a very short break from serving, packed up extra socks and undershirts to take back to the front, I also packed up a bag for him, because he is my son, whom I raised to be happy and good and to love. 

*It's apparently a 'trend' for all the reserve soldiers (approximately 300,000 of them) to grow mustaches to honor the soldiers of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when it was the fashion to have mustaches.