My Moses Moment

Okay, so Gwyneth took a pass on another fruity name and went with Moses for her baby boy. Add that to the fact that it's nearly Passover (no, I'm not Jewish, but I've dipped my share of parsley into little bowls of salt water), and I have a mild case of Moses on my mind. I share with you, now, my Moses Moment.

Ten years ago, just before I got pregnant with Teddy, his dad and I went to Israel for a week. We were in London, and this was our spring break escape from all the wet and gray cold. Our only requirement for the trip was that it be to a place that was warm and sunny, which ruled out pretty much everything we could get to cheaply, outside of Africa and Israel. Africa required shots, so the decision was made.

We each packed a bag and walked to the underground, and then caught a train, and then flew to Eilat (I couldn't believe how self-sufficiently we were able to leave the country--going to England involved two cars' worth of family and luggage to see us off at the Pittsburgh Airport). We landed at one of those little airports where guys wheel stairs up to the plane and you climb down and then walk across tarmac to get into the main building. We caught a cab to take us to our hostel (a remarkably nice one wherein we actually had our own bathroom!), and spent a week reading, soaking up the sun, and sniggering at the Russian tourists who really did resemble walruses. Well, the men did, anyway. The women were topless and leather-skinned. Oh! And there was an earthquake one morning while we were eating our breakfast! Just a little one, but it felt like our breakfast table was sitting on top of a washing machine while on the spin cycle. By the time we realized what it was, it was over.

We went scuba diving, which was exciting and terrifying, like the greatest roller coaster ever, only amplified about a million times. WAY scarier than the little earthquake.

We didn't go to Jerusalem, because the day we bought our tickets for the bus trip up, we heard that a tour bus had been bombed and that American students had been killed. I got scared and cried, and then we called our parents from a pay phone to let them know we were fine, and then we threw out the bus tickets and resolved to just stay at the beach.

So where was Moses in all of this? Well, Eilat is a little town that sits right on the Red Sea. I was lying on the beach, thinking about how the mountains reminded me of the chocolate mountains in the "Land of Dairy Queen" TV commercials and thinking, look, there's Egypt . . . look, there's Jordan . . . HOLY CRAP, MOSES WAS HERE! MOSES! PROMISED LAND! PARTING THE RED SEA! I was just blown away by the fact that the clear water I was staring into, watching schools of little fish arc up out of like tiny rainbows, was THAT Red Sea.

Never before or since has biblical history felt so amazing and alive and, frankly possible as it did at that moment.

All that, from a week at the beach. Not bad!