The first time we took our girls to Israel was for my oldest daughter’s bat mitzvah. I was nervous about the flight because my eight year old was still very rambunctious, but also because she had bad allergies and chronic congestion; I was worried the shifting cabin pressure would trigger yet another sinus infection. The flight went well as did the rest of our visit which we capped off with a trip to the Dead Sea.
As we stood there at the edge of the water, baking in the August heat, we marveled at the water’s buoyancy and at the salt formations, and suddenly, a look of wonder tinged with shock passed over my younger daughter’s face. “I can breathe, I can breathe through my nose!!” In about thirty seconds, I had reconfigured our life. We would settle by the sea, my husband would become a Masada guide, and I would homeschool at the water’s edge.
But the dream bubble popped as dream bubbles often do, and on our next visit to the allergist, when we told her about my daughter’s experience, she explained that it was the combination of dry, arid air and the saline spray from the water that had cleared her out. Logically, I understood this to be true, but I wasn’t looking for an explanation. The look on my daughters face when she took her first clean breath in the Israeli desert will always remain a miracle.
