MountainMornings

Tonight a New Year begins for Jewish families around the world. It’s a time to reflect on our joys and sorrows, a personal reckoning of sorts that will culminate on Yom Kippur. But first, we celebrate the sweetness of life by dipping apples into honey.

I’m very happy to turn the page on this year. Bob and I had planned to explore Costa Rica. My brother and sister were finally going to come to Nashville for a visit this past summer. And next month, we were supposed to travel to Corsica with Marco and Claudio, our chefs du cuisine, international diplomacy and exuberant friendship. But there is always next year…

Happily, we managed a small, pod-isolated beach break with our Nashville crew. The Groom survived his bout with Covid, and the Bride still works in the ER, caring for any one who walks through the door. She is participating in the Moderna study for a vaccine – she had her second shot on her birthday! This summer, the L’il Pumpkin learned how to ride a bike! And our tiny neighborhood has grown closer, we look after one another, staying in close contact during tornado watches.

I almost forgot the tornado. Please God, make this tornado and wildfire business stop.

Tonight the shofar will call us to Temple but we cannot go. Instead a good friend is bringing Shabbos dinner to Great Grandma Ada and her cohorts. I’m baking my famous triple-layer toasted coconut frosted carrot cake. Bob has baked a round challah to symbolize goodness without end. Unlike his usual sourdough, this bread uses yeast and eggs and he must roll and braid it into one delicious mound of yumminess.

That’s another thing I’m thankful for this year – a husband who bakes bread. Taking the time to sew masks, bake bread, and generally sit around and actually talk has been enlightening. We have slow dinners on the Bride’s porch. We host “cocktails” in our garden. We seem to have learned the names of all the neighborhood dogs. Bowzer and Penelope are favorites.

The Black Lives Matter movement became a touchstone in 2020. Evident and inextricably linked to a legacy of systemic racism. And I’m hopeful that out of the pain and suffering, out of a public execution of a Black man in the streets of Minneapolis, and a young woman murdered in her bed in Kentucky, and so many more, that real change and peace will heal our history of racial violence.

All of our Fall birthdays have come to a close with Aunt Kiki yesterday. She is a shining light in the fog and fires, in these pandemic days with our son in California. I still think of her as that 19 year old Irish dancer who took the Rocker’s heart and breath away, only to return more love and laughter to our family. May they and their friends and everyone in the path of these wildfires out West stay safe.

L’Shana Tovah and may your next year taste sweeter and shine brighter. May your name be a blessing. And when we recover from this plague may we keep those lessons we’ve learned: about friendship; about stillness; about equal justice for all, about love.