January 10 （visa expires in 4 days）
I was watching a movie on Netflix, sort of.
Actually, I was lost in thought. The silence in my apartment made me feel like I was going insane, so I had gone over to the Arielis.
Eli was out running some errands for the tourism business he and Naama owned.
Keren was out with friends (or with Sean, she wouldn’t say).
So it was just Naama and me at home. She’d been on the phone with Liam the whole time I was there.
“Liam says hi.”
I think so much and never manage to…
“Amit? Hello? Amit!” Naama interrupted my reverie.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Didn’t you hear me tell you that Liam says hi?”
“Oh sorry, my head was completely in the movie. I didn’t hear you.”
Do you know that feeling when your parents come into your room at the worst possible moment during a movie? Some character had his head chopped clean off just as she glanced at the screen.
“Okay, well maybe I shouldn’t have put it like that.” We looked at each other and cracked up. Naama eventually took the remote and turned off the TV. I didn’t object. She knew that kind of movie wasn’t my thing. She’d tried often enough to talk me into watching one.
“Have you decided whether to go and see your mother?” I had told them about my conversation with her and had never seen them so pleased.
“I want to, but I can’t stand the thought of leaving what I’ve had with Daniel over the last month.
It’s like this,” I started to tell her about the thoughts plaguing me.
“On one hand, I know that he’ll leave Thailand soon anyhow.
I don’t know when he’ll come back, and I don’t know if I could ever live the way he does.
On the other hand, I want to give my mother another chance.
Daniel will never go there though, to New York.
It’s so freakin’ complicated. Is love supposed to be like this?
I’m aware of what will eventually happen, but it’s too painful to actually make that call.
My heart breaks just thinking about it. It’s like a giant hole in my gut that will swallow me whole when I decide. I don’t know what to do.”
Naama was silent for a few moments and then she said, “I can’t tell you what to do.
You’ll have to be brave. I know you are, even if you don’t believe so.
But maybe it’ll be helpful for you if I tell you about Liam’s dilemma last year.
You know he really struggled with whether to go back to Israel and do his army service, or stay in Thailand – not because of us – but because he’d found love. ”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Do you know what helped him decide?”
“No, only that he decided to go to the army, and he broke up with his boyfriend because of it.” I’d never seen Liam so crushed.
“He never told you this, but he really looks up to you as a big brother and a role model and it was thanks to you that he found his truth and made the decision. He said he was going to the army to make sure that what happened to you never happens to anyone else, that if he could stop even one terrorist from destroying a family, his own sacrifice would be worth it.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. The worst part was seeing how hard it was for Naama.
“It wasn’t easy for him. I know how much he wanted to be near us. He misses us, but he knew he’d regret it his whole life if he didn’t do it.”
I hugged her tight. Being far away from her son, worrying if he was alright, was so hard for her. I missed him too, but she must have been in agony.
We let each other go and wiped our eyes.
“You’re facing a similar dilemma. If there’s no intermediate solution and you have to decide, the choice must be between unbearable regret and terrible pain.
You can’t live with that kind of regret, but pain is different.
Time will ease it, even if it never goes away completely.
You’ve only got one mother, Amit.” I opened my mouth to say…
but she interrupted me. “No. It’s a huge compliment that you call me that, but I’m not the real thing. ”
“Never forget, we are here for you. We care about you. We saw the look on your face that night at Chabad when you first met Daniel. We’d never seen you like that.
That’s why we didn’t let Keren tag along on your first date – even if you hadn’t realized it was a date.
” She laughed. “You’ve got x-ray vision – you saw through us, saw us, and reached our hearts at the speed of light.
You saw the real Liam before we managed to – perhaps before he did himself.
You saw Keren, and knew exactly how to annoy her, but also how to give her what she wanted more than anything.
You saw Daniel, past the shallow exterior, and knew you could trust him, no small thing for you.
That’s why you’re so amazing at your job.
I’m asking you to use your x-ray vision on yourself this time and find out what your heart really desires.
Decide, choose, act, just don’t let life decide for you.
“Just one more thing,” she continued, “Sometimes children think their parents are robots, have no feelings. Remember, you need your mother, but she also needs her son.” I could see how much Naama needed her son, and I felt helpless.
She was right. I had to be brave like Liam and make a hard decision before life did it for me.