L'Shannah Tovah

Tonight we begin the observance of Rosh Hashanah, and I believe it will be my son's first memorable experience with a religious holiday. He was practically born into our synagogue; he was born at 5:00 on a Friday, and was at the Friday night service with me a week later -- granted, I was sitting in a super-cushioned chair that had been brought into the sanctuary just for me.... And let's face it -- that's appropriate for a boy whose parents met in that sanctuary, and were married there.

The last year has been particularly hard for me, in a religious sense. We haven't mastered Tot Shabbat, much less the ability to sit through a Friday night or Saturday morning service, which means that my spiritual life has been relegated to "things we can do at home," and "occasions when it would be inappropriate not to attend and so one of us goes alone and the other stays home," plus the occasional "bar or bat mitzvah warranting a babysitter." I feel like I've taken a year-long vacation from God, and it feels weird. I was tight with God for a long time, and I feel like I've had to set Him aside in favor of maternal responsibilities.

So tonight, I've planned to stay home with my boy while my husband and stepson attend services, and the wee boy and I can start to create our own Rosh Hashanah tradition. Ideally, I'd like it to exclude television, no matter how educational, and include some rituals that may create a memory for him that will guide him into the natural flow of the religious year for us. Tonight, we'll eat all the apples we want, I think, and honey right off the spoon. We'll make a honeycake for tomorrow's dinner, and we'll light candles. I think I'll read him some of the prayers from the service we'll be missing, and maybe I can work on teaching him some new songs.

When I was a teenager, watching my parents prepare for Christmas for me and my younger brother, I often wondered how they could get so excited about setting up for a holiday that was fairly one-sided -- they did all these preparations and worked so hard to create an environment that made such an impression on us, and apparently got so little out of it. I hadn't realized, of course, how much joy there could be in creating especially these first impressions of these important family moments that would form our visceral memories of childhood, and create such magic for us.

Tonight I feel the responsibility for creating that magic, in a tradition that I came to and was not born and raised into. I'm hoping that I can do it justice, and create the same kind of magic for my little boy that my parents created for me and my brothers. It's an awesome responsibility, when you get down to it, made complex by having to occasionally pull out reference materials to make sure that I'm doing it "right."