Our Year of Maybe

“I’ve been doing some research about Israel,” I say, which makes them glance up.

“Israel?” my mom repeats, like I’ve told her I was doing some research about cooking meth. “What kind of research?”

“Um.” I fiddle with my bracelet. “I was looking into Birthright, actually. The trip Sophie’s parents met on?”

“With what money?” my mom asks. My medical expenses have not been cheap. We’re lucky to have good insurance, lucky my parents have good jobs.

“Birthright is free,” my dad says.

“Is it . . . safe?”

Of course that’s what she’d ask. Of course she’d assume that, simply because Israel’s in the Middle East, it’s unsafe, despite the thousands of Americans who travel there each year.

It makes me wish, not for the first time, that my mom were Jewish too.

“Very safe.” My dad shuts the magazine. “They have a security guard travel with the group, don’t they?”

I nod. “And members of the IDF, too.”

My mom’s eyebrows climb up her forehead.

“Israel Defense Forces,” I supply. “That’s the military there. Everyone has to do mandatory—”

“I know that,” my mom snaps. Snaps. It’s unlike her.

“You can’t go until you’re eighteen, but I could apply this summer.” It’s not even that I want to go that soon necessarily. For the past couple months, this combative itch has been building beneath my skin, a desire to push my parents.

To see how much they’ll fight back.

“Why the rush?” My mom crosses her arms. “You’re just starting to feel better, Peter. Why risk it?”

Why not take full advantage of everything my body can do now? I want to ask.

“What if you missed a dose of your immunosuppressants?” my dad says. “Or something happens with the donor kidney?”

“How will you be able to keep up with your medications if you’re traveling on your own?”

They’re so focused on the “what if.” They always have been.

“I wouldn’t be on my own. I’d be with a whole group of people. And I’ll be in college in a year and a half. How will you trust me to keep up with them then?”

“College!” She says it so loudly that an older couple across the waiting room looks over at us. I hope they’re not waiting for bad news. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We haven’t even gotten there yet. Let’s focus on what’s in front of us now. One day at a time.”

It’s fire in my veins now, this urge to bite back at them. Before, I never had the energy. Being sheltered was great

if it meant another first edition on my bookshelf, another gift to buy my complacency.

“But—what am I supposed to do?” I’m surprised when the words aren’t filled with the anger I intended. Instead, they sound almost . . . hurt. “Stay here forever? I thought I’d finally be able to be more independent—”

“Peter.” My mom clutches my arm. I try to wrest my jacket sleeve from her grasp. “I wish you could have a normal life, but it’s always going to be different for you. You must understand that.”

“You’re the ones making it different for me!” I say. “Making it harder! There are so many things I should have been able to do, but you wouldn’t let me. Do you know how much I didn’t get to experience because of you?”

“Enough, Peter,” my dad says.

But I haven’t had enough. I’m tired. I’m tired of how repetitive my life has become, an infinite DC al fine that sounds the same every fucking time. Is it really so awful of me to want more?

“Could I—could I at least take driver’s ed?” My voice is small now. I’m ten years old, asking my parents why I can’t go to the Oregon Coast with Sophie’s family. Why I can’t go on a field trip on Seattle’s Underground Tour. Why I can’t take PE.