Later that evening you milled around the house and I followed you like a shadow. You shaved for a night out with the guys, but really you did it for Meital, who didn’t like feeling she was petting a porcupine. And then, when we heard a switch go off in their bedroom, you drew closer to me and whispered that now you could tell me. Someone had almost infiltrated the outpost while Itai was on guard duty, and it was pure luck that Rozner happened to be on patrol and caught him. And that in two weeks you might be sent off to Gaza because there was a shitstorm going on over there. And you told me not to tell them a thing, because Mom was stressed out enough as is, and it wasn’t good for Dad’s blood pressure. But that I needed to hear it, because in a few years it might be me.

And I tried to commit everything to memory. Every piece of advice and warning, and every word out of your new military lingo. I even remember the tricks you played on Rozner. Finally, when you were about to go out, you asked me if I was making any progress with the girl I had told you about, and I explained I’d been busy. And when you asked what I had been busy with, I stood in front of you and mumbled awkwardly that I was trying to catch time.

“The last thing a ten-year-old needs is time,” you said. “What could you possibly do with it?”

And since I honestly didn’t know, I said I’d been meaning to stop anyway, which only ticked you off even more. You immediately demanded I show you how I tried to catch it, so I reached out, fingers spread wide, and you examined the distance between my hands, the speed of my catch, and strength of my grip.

“Well, no wonder you can’t catch any, you’ve got no patience,” you announced, and even though you were supposed to have headed out long ago, you demonstrated with your big hands how you have to wait for time to settle between your fingers. And the moment you caught a chunk of it, you shouted at me to bring a bottle, and I ran to the kitchen while you continued to wrestle with the chunk that almost slipped from your fingers, and only at the very last minute we managed to push it into the bottle. Panting and sweating, we looked at the bottle and saw the chunk swirling inside it like a guppy in a fishbowl. Then you told me you had to get going and that I shouldn’t worry. “I’ve got plenty of time on my hands with all those guard duty shifts; I’ll save some for you.”