I’ve been too busy to blog for the past few days, what with it being Rosh Hashanah and my having three services to attend and a holiday meal to help prepare. I’ll catch up anon, but I have one quick post to make before I forget.
My calendar says that it’s 5771 as of Wednesday night. But today, for a little while anyway, it felt oddly like 1974 to me. I took Simon to services with me today, and he just could not have been a better behaved little boy. I decided to skip the sitter service, figuring that he wouldn’t like being with kids and sitters he doesn’t know, and opted instead to bring him into the sanctuary for as long as he could reasonably tolerate it. He surely wasn’t going to last the full three hours + of the service. My hope was that he would make it for two twenty-minute sessions with a break in the middle.
He lasted an hour—with no break. This not-quite-four year old arrived for the shofar service, sat quietly through a 15-20-minute sermon, then hung out with no complaints for another 20-30 minutes of prayer and song, the vast majority of which was in Hebrew. I made sure that he realized that the pretty singing came from “Cantor Sharon”, his friend Leah’s mommy, we bumped into two of his teachers while inside, and several old friends of the family fussed over him. He entertained himself with his cars, he was mesmerized by my tights much as I used to love the feel of my brothers’ tallit fringe, and he was happy to hold my hand when we were sitting and be held and nuzzle my neck when we were standing.
After an hour of such amazing decorum, I decided it was time to leave while he was still in a good mood. I convinced my mom that it was OK if she missed the end of the musaf service, too, and we headed to the mall—yes, the mall—to grab lunch and run to Stride Rite to get Simon new school shoes. You’d think we took him to Disney Land. Escalators! and grilled cheese! and cookies! and new shoes!– oh my! He loved every minute it.
So why does this bring me back to the early seventies? Because some of my fondest memories from youth begin in the sanctuary at KI sitting with my mom and Bubbie, continue with lunch at a cafeteria at the mall, and end with the three of us shopping away the afternoon. My Bubbie would assuredly be horrified that we engaged in commerce on Rosh Hashanah. But just as assuredly, I know she’d well recognize the scene and realize that I was paying her an accidental homage.
Shana Tova!
L’shana tova to you and yours, Jess.