A Grandmother Called Her Children to Say Goodbye

Come here, babies. Sit down with Auntie a minute.
I need to tell you about a grandmother.
Her name is Mariana. She saved up, she planned, she made the trip of her life — a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Not a political trip. Not a business trip. A grandmother walking where she believed Jesus walked, doing the most human and faithful thing a person can do, before her knees got too bad to make the journey.

At 2:30 in the morning on Saturday, she called her children.
She told them she loved them. She told them to forgive her. She told them she thought it was over.
Rockets were crossing the sky above Bethlehem.
And the man who put them there had gone back to bed.
Auntie has been sitting with that image all day. A grandmother in the holiest city in the world, calling her babies to say goodbye. Because a man in a baseball cap posted a video to his social media app in the middle of the night and started a war — with no plan, no warning, no thought given to the tens of thousands of ordinary Americans who were already over there living their lives.

Teachers. Missionaries. Aid workers. Retirees on bucket list trips. Diplomats’ kids who didn’t choose to be there. Grandmothers on pilgrimages.
The State Department told them all: DEPART NOW.
Just like that. All caps. DEPART NOW.
With what flight, my loves? The airspace is closed. The airports are shuttered. Forty percent of scheduled flights were already cancelled before Monday was over. There are cruise ships sitting in the Strait of Hormuz that cannot move. And when people called the official State Department number — the one Marco Rubio recited on Capitol Hill — you know what the recording said?
“Please do not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation at this time. There are currently no United States evacuation points.”

Auntie had to read that three times.

There are no evacuation points. There is no plan. Italy sent military planes. The United Kingdom organized flights. Country after country went and got their people. The United States told its citizens to check with their airlines.
When a reporter asked the President of the United States why there was no evacuation plan, he said — and I need you to really hear this — “Well, because it happened all very quickly.”
Very quickly.

Baby, they knew. They knew for weeks this was coming. Marco Rubio said so himself, out loud, to Congress, on the record. They knew Israel was going to strike. They knew Iran would hit back. They made a choice. And not one single person in that entire apparatus thought to pick up a phone and say — what about our people over there? What’s the plan for getting them home?
Not one.

Mariana made it home to Bucharest. Thank God. Thank God.
But there are still Americans sleeping on airport floors tonight. Americans sheltering away from windows in Kuwait because the embassy is closed. Americans in Israel being told the embassy is “not in a position to evacuate or directly assist” them. Children — babies, little ones who had nothing to do with any of this — waiting in apartments to find out if their government is coming.

And Auntie needs you to feel that. Really feel it. Not the politics of it. Not the outrage of it. The human weight of it.
A grandmother calling her children to say goodbye.
That is what was done. That is what no one planned for. That is what “it happened very quickly” means when you strip away the shrug.

Now. Come closer.

I know you’re scared. I know some of you have people over there. I know the news is coming so fast and so hard that it feels like standing in a current that won’t stop. I know the helplessness of watching something this enormous unfold and feeling like there is nothing in your two hands that can stop it.

Auntie feels it too. Her chest has been tight since Saturday.
But here is what I need you to hold onto, my loves — and I mean hold on tight, like it’s the only solid thing in the room, because right now it might be.

There are people fighting. Jamie Raskin is walking into places he’s not supposed to be and shining lights into dark corners. There are senators — some of them Republican — who are standing up in hearings and using words like disaster and unacceptable and insufficient to describe what this administration is doing. There are journalists with their phones pointed at the truth even when the truth is ugly. There are ordinary people organizing, calling, showing up.
The machine did not plan for the grandmothers. But the grandmothers are not alone.
You are not alone.

Be scared. You’re allowed. Be furious — Lord knows there’s enough to fuel it. Scream into the void if you need to, and Auntie will scream right along with you.
And then, my darlings — then take a breath.
Because we do not get through this by burning out in the first week. We get through this by staying human when everything around us is trying to make that harder. By keeping our moral footing when the ground keeps shifting. By remembering that a grandmother in Bethlehem calling her children to say goodbye is not a statistic or a talking point — she is the whole entire point.

She is why we keep going.
Come here, babies.
Auntie’s got you.
We don’t leave our people behind. Not in war zones, not in this fight, not ever. That’s the difference between us and them, and we hold that difference like it’s sacred.
Because it is.