It's hard to believe that last Friday everyone was in festive mood watching the annual Purim holiday parade down a central boulevard, a kid focused celebration in which all the local elementary schools, youth groups, Scouts, children's gymnastics, dance and sports teams participate, most in themed fancy dress, one school all native wildflowers, another honouring firefighters.

It felt so normal, so joyous. I know I wasn't the only adult standing there with children or grandchildren with tears rolling down my cheeks at the feeling of simple happiness watching this community celebration, the kids beaming, the hours of work that had clearly gone into so many floats and costumes, the innocent fun, something I will never be able to take for granted again. So yes, in a way those tears watching the parade were a release of all the awfulness welled up inside since October 7, tears of relief and seeing our children having a regular, happy, Purim event with silliness and costumes and fun. Finally, after these terrible years in the shadow of the horrific Hamas invasion of Israel, of the war forced on us by the brutal Hamas assault, of sick fear over the fate of our hostages, of rockets and the threat of Hizballah from the north, after all of that, this Purim parade was the promise of sweet normality and letting our children be children. But those tears were also the thought that even if the threat of another Iran war which has been hanging over us for months, comes crashing down tomorrow or the next day and once again, a national emergency stops our children from experiencing the simple joys of Purim, the school fancy dress event, the community celebrations, the silly season in all its silliness. Even if all that is cancelled again, at least, at the very least, the children who spent so long preparing and anticipating and getting excited over this event, will have gotten their wonderfully happy, Purim parade. And so it was. We were woken in the early hours of the following morning to missile alerts from Iran.