My Daughter Arrived Alone in a Foreign Country With Covid and Now There’s a Series of Shootings

This mother’s nerves are being tested to the max

Probably one of any mother’s worst nightmares is watching her firstborn fly the nest to foreign lands and face the exact things that the world at large fears most: dealing with changing Covid restrictions; isolating with Covid with no family or friends present, or life-threatening violence.

Well, this is exactly what this mother here has faced over the last couple of weeks.

Thankfully, I am an extremely calm person in general and know that worrying is pointless. That said, I am not immune to it either.

Back in January, my eldest daughter — just turned nineteen — jumped on a plane to Istanbul. Both her father and I have blessed her with adventurous genes, so I am partly to blame here, for sure.

That was a wrench; my fairly naive, fairly sheltered, blonde-haired daughter, heading to a part of the world where many men view western women as a target for sexual conduct. Oh, and she went alone.

I mean, she’s never even been to London without her parents, for heaven’s sake! Here in the rural South West of the UK, the biggest danger is missing the bus home because they are so few and far between.

And so, it felt a little more than uncomfortable when she set off for four weeks of exploring Turkey, alone, at the height of winter. I felt unnerved about her wandering Istanbul alone. And then I felt unnerved about her taking overnight buses through the mountains and the snow.

But, she proved that she’s a strong, independent lass who can cope with a bit of the unknown, and loves an adventure.

So, with this reassurance, when she booked herself onto a flight to Tel Aviv for the spring, having lined herself up with a job in a hostel, I had no worries at all.

The truth is, I was extremely excited for her and slightly envious.

Tel Aviv is a place I know well. Throughout my childhood, we would venture over to Israel most years to stay with my Savta — Hebrew for Grandma — and see aunties, uncles and cousins.

My mother was born in Tel Aviv; my parents met and married there, and my sister was born there. They left before I was born because my dad had had enough of the constant threat of war and didn’t want to raise a family in that environment.

My childhood memories are of the beach, of big waffle cones of ice cream, of falafel and shawarma in pitta on Rehov Dizengoff — the main hub of café culture, at least then.

I can still smell the unique smell of Tel Aviv beach; feel the intense heat of the sun in the late morning, and taste the lemon ice lollies that we would buy from the vendor who would walk up and down the beach with his icebox on a trolley.

We would visit my mother’s friends in their big, airy houses so unlike cosy, English houses. And everywhere we went, there were sweets given to us that became the flavour of Savta’s flat.

We would go to Bat Yam to spend Pesach (Passover) with the younger of my mother’s brothers and their large family. Aunt Simi would smoke in the kitchen, making me choke every time, and Uncle Itzik would be prepping the table and hassling the kids to help out.

And then we would sit down at a long table that we could only just fit around and share the long, drawn-out Passover meal.

That was my childhood.

Our annual visits ceased after Savta passed away when I was twelve.

We did rent a flat in Haifa during the summer that I turned thirteen. There was a bomb explosion in the town one day while my mother was napping and my sister and I were down at the beach.

We walked back towards the flat, only to find our way blocked and parts of the town cordoned off.

My mother never suggested a holiday in Israel again during my teen years.

When I had turned eighteen and was heading away for my gap year between school and university, I decided I wanted to go and spend some time in Israel.

My Israeli citizenship allowed me to work legally and so I spent four months in Tel Aviv, working in a few different jobs before I settled in a waitressing job in a small, bohemian café-bar on Rehov Sheinken — a very trendy street in a very religious part of the city.

I had the time of my life, mixing with the many international travellers passing through, as well as the Tel Aviv residents. I partied like an eighteen-year-old should party and visited the places around the country that I had spent time in as a child.

My memories of Tel Aviv are strong and vibrant — of some of the best times of my youth.

And this is exactly why, when my daughter started looking at the possibility of going out there, the excited eighteen-year-old in me re-emerged, manifesting in a bubble of excitement for her next adventure. Then, in mid-March, she headed off on her voyage.

With a long bus trip to the airport, an evening flight to Milan, and a nine-hour stopover until her onward flight to Tel Aviv, I waited until the day after she set off to message and check that she had arrived at the Airbnb accommodation that we had found for her.

She excitedly called me to tell me how much she loved Israel already, despite ending up paying over the odds for a taxi that took her to the wrong place and then struggling to find her way. Eventually, she did find her Airbnb and was now settling in.

She had taken a PCR test at the airport, as was required by the authorities, and was now having to isolate herself for 24 hours or until a negative test result was emailed to her. I asked her what she was going to do for the rest of the day.

“Oh I will just rest and get some sleep,” she said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night and I have a bit of a sore throat. I think I caught Torin’s cold.”

Sore throat? Alarm bells rang…but I didn’t say anything.

The day before she had set off, my son had come home from school feeling extremely tired and didn’t have his usual ravenous appetite. He had taken himself to bed and, when I went to check on him, I realised that he had a fever.

At the time, Covid hadn’t occurred to me.

I had left the house early the following morning, while he was still sleeping, to drive my daughter to her bus, and arrived home to find him stirring. I asked him how he was feeling.

“I feel great!” His eyes were wide and excited, and whatever it was seemed to have gone as fast as it had come. I didn’t think of Covid until now. Now I remembered — he had had an annoying cough the previous weekend, but that only lasted a day and then was gone again.

And so, I waited on tenterhooks the next morning to hear that she was well-rested, in good health, and free to explore Israel.

Alas, the message that arrived was not the case. Although her 24-hour isolation period was over before her test result arrived, when it eventually did, it was positive.

And she was now feverish and coughing.

Of course, the mother-worries were now rising. How was she going to get what she needed? How was her Airbnb host going to react and deal with this?

I have a cousin who lives a 30-minute drive from Tel Aviv and I wondered about asking her to deliver supplies to my daughter.

Thankfully, however, my daughter has some pretty good guardian angels watching over her. The Airbnb host was happy to cook for her and brought her local Israeli treats and snacks that kept her spirits high.

Five days later, other than having been pretty bored at times, she escaped her Covid imprisonment with no damage done. And off she went to begin her job at the hostel.

Arriving at a buzzing and busy hostel in Tel Aviv was exactly what this company-starved girl needed and she was in her element.

She loved her job from the moment she arrived and made friends instantly. The other people working there, along with many of the guests, were party-loving social creatures and she found her place comfortably among them.

During her isolation period, she had already had plenty of time to search online for events, parties and festivals in Tel Aviv, and was overjoyed to find that there was something happening every day. A far cry from her home in rural England.

While waiting to be told when her upcoming days off would be, she began planning a day trip to Jerusalem, and another day trip to meet my cousin, Sharon. She couldn’t wait.

And then…news came to me via the media channels that three episodes of deadly shootings had taken place in Israel over the previous week, with the most recent one in a religious suburb of Tel Aviv. Although I was certain that she was safe, learning that attacks were taking place with such frequency in the area close to her unnerved me.

The last shooting was just a couple of days ago and, right now, she is more than happy staying home at the hostel and only going places very close by. Jerusalem is off the cards, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, life goes on and plans are still in place to meet Sharon next week and have some fun in Tel Aviv.

I am still calm, but now a little more on my guard.

Let’s just say that reality hit.

I got comfortable, which is a good thing for a mother whose firstborn has recently taken off to far-flung places. Turkey, despite my worries about her dealing with Covid restrictions and what may happen should she get sick with it, turned out to be a walk-in-the-park. Israel has been a wake-up call.

I know that she will be sensible, and I know that my best approach to any unexpectedly unpleasant happenings around her is simply to trust her to act with common sense and care. Yet, suddenly, her being in Israel has become somewhat less comfortable for me.

She only has a little over two weeks left there — for now, since I believe she will return — and then she travels to Italy to teach English for two months. I know she’s going to have a blast there and I can be sure that, no matter how uncomfortable any of this may get for me, she is experiencing and learning, and doing what she needs to do.

That’s the price of having an adventurous spirit for a daughter. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thanks for reading! If you aren’t yet a Medium member and would love to have unlimited access to read the work of all your favourite writers, please consider joining through my referral link.

Here’s another of my mothering musings for your perusal: