They had all escaped.

They had built families, friendships, careers.

They had made homes and gotten new nationalities.

They had known many successes, and like everyone else, some failures.

They were stable.

They were even happy.

Their lives looked good from both the outside and the inside; they were worldly, cultured, adaptable, sociable, liked by most. They had good jobs, they were still together, they were proud parents, they were loved parents. For many, they were the definition of success.

For a long time, because of this, I thought they were unscathed.

Evidently, they had scars. Some figments of their genetic heritage, upbringing, and some marks that life leaves. Just like everyone else. 

Yet, unlike everyone else, they were unequivocally fine.

As if none of it had happened at all.

They were by no means damaged, and everyone was OK. It was very important to relish in that, and to thank God for it. It could have been worse; others had suffered much more. Look at them - and us, their children – now. Our lives were better than most people. They, and us, were truly unscathed. Although we, their children, did not have anything to be damaged by. Not only had we not gone through anything, but we had been cherished, beloved, and given all the care, comfort and attention needed to be perfect. By the way, not only were we unscathed, we were perfect. All of us. It was quite incredible, a true blessing, and another reason to be grateful.

Their friends, acquaintances, even us, often asked about it. We asked, simply out of curiosity. We asked because we only understood it the way a child understands falling in love: through the lens of movies and stories. We asked with the lightness of those who don’t comprehend the extend of the damage. We asked as if asking a grand-parent to talk about an era we were too young to have experienced; tell us a story!

They always obliged. It was, after all, what any normal person would do. Like a benevolent grand-mother recounting tales of her childhood, they would tell us about how they ran from bombs coming back from school, how they hid in the basement when the windows would start shattering, or about that one time they had lost a friend. As if they were reminiscing to young millennials about life before cellphones or the internet. As if they were unscathed, as if it was light dinner conversation, they told a story or two. Sometimes three. 

When people asked for more details, they never obliged but always pretended. They were OK after all, they couldn’t simply say they did not want to talk about it. And so, inevitably, they went back to what they were comfortable sharing. They had confined it all to a few rehearsed stories, and a carefully scripted exchange. As if following a recipe, they gave a hint of horror, a pinch of nostalgia, a measured display of sadness and pain. Retelling the same events made them stories they had detached from, ones that they could share without re-living. Ones that they could tell while staying at a comfortable level of painful.

They told stories and never shared memories.

As I watched this repeat through my childhood and early adulthood, I started seeing the pattern and stopped fishing for memories. I understood those would crack the unscathed façade they had built for themselves as an armor.

They had all made a bubble around their lives, and they were fine. Most of all, they had gotten very good at not letting the bubble pop, no matter how loud, how destructive, or how big the bombs were outside.