Rosh Hashanah is the official celebration that welcomes in the Jewish New Year. It is a time when every Jew looks back at the year previous and takes a personal assessment of the events and their own actions. It’s also a good time to make a list of everything you are going to have to atone for in a few weeks when Yom Kippur rolls around.
When I look back at 5765, all I can say is that it started out shitty. Last Rosh Hashanah, we packed up the baby and went to a place called Camp Long in West Seattle. The main hall where the services and meals were held was nice, heated, and had a very friendly, comforting vibe. We intended to stay in one of the rustic looking cabins, but the moment I walked into it, I knew that we were leaving in between services. All I can say about those cabins is that perhaps having a Jewish thing in a place where the sleeping accommodations look very similar to concentration camp barracks isn’t such a good idea. Jeff nearly had a shit when he walked into the small room with wooden bunks. He called his uncle to tell him that right now we were sitting in either “Auschwitz or Dachau Cabin 12”.
Despite our questionable accommodations, that wasn’t the bad part. The bad part happened on our second night celebration when my sister called me panicked, because my mother had lost all movement and control of the left side of her body. Here I was at an orthodox Rosh Hashanah service on my cell phone, which is a big “no no” trying to talk my stepdad into taking Mom to the emergency room. In the end, after making a phone call to my Mom’s doctor, I knew that the brain tumor she had successfully fought back in 2000 had returned.
The next seven weeks of my life were spent commuting between Boise and Seattle trying to spend as much time with my mom as possible. Two weeks after we celebrated her 49th birthday, we buried her in a nice cemetery near the home she loved dearly.
Reflecting on the rest of 5765, all I can say is that it was somewhat uneventful and seems to have gone by so fast. We moved to our picturesque suburb in January. I spent the next few months desperately in love with my house, until Spring brought me clarity and I realized what the term “velvet sweatshop” meant. The realization that I was a punk stuck in Suburbia caused me to enter therapy shortly after celebrating both my sister’s and Jeff’s graduation where they received graduate degrees. I ditched therapy around mid-July when I started this blog.
I guess most of the positive highlights from this year came from my baby munchkin who started walking, talking, and, much to my chagrin, making demands. She developed a stubborn streak, a desire for all things Dora the Explorer, and has become quite the fashionista picking out her own outfits as well as going out of her way to tell me “yes” and “no” when I venture into the store’s dressing room with a variety of new shirts. Together we traveled across country to visit my Italian family in Connecticut, and enjoyed lazy afternoons at home. I took her to her first concert, and sent her to pre-school.
5766 will be quite a different year. I will begin working full-time again soon, which means Rachael will start daycare. I’m not too nervous about this since she is the only child in her pre-school class who will wave “goodbye” to me when I drop her off and cry when I pick her up. I guess she’s too young to utter the words, “Hey Ma, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
Rachael and I will make another solo trip across country in December to see my sister’s new baby; a little girl who will be born on Halloween, which was the freaky request of my brother-in-law. I look forward to finishing the book I’m currently working on, and possibly getting it published. I also am confident that I’ll be at my weight goal by the time we head out for our next big vacation in August.
I’m also looking forward to the complete implosion of the neo-con empire that has ruled with an evil iron fist over this country for the past six years, and will be incredibly delighted when people on the left and right clean house in the next major election. After all, the only good politician is a first or second term politician, after that they become tainted by power and money and let us good folks fall by the wayside.
Mostly, I hope by this time next year, I’m celebrating Rosh Hashanah 5767 with the same family, immediate and extended, that I have now, with health, happiness, and additions rather than subtractions.
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