Rosh Hashanah Preparations II

Rosh Hashanah is supposed to be about Teshuvah, about change, about the glory of G-d and many other lofty concepts. But the excitement of the holidays doesn't always come from such lofty places.

On Thursday I went into Teaneck to try and sell some books at a used bookstore and pick up some challah at a bakery. The place (the latter one) was absolutely bustling. I had to wait for almost half an hour to get helped. And when I left the shop I saw so many people rushing here and there with bags of groceries and arms draped with dry cleaning. It was quite invigorating.

I hadn't realized it before, but there is a farmer's market this time of year in the very parking lot where I parked, so I made my way over there, mentally beginning to write this blog and thinking of how nice it was to get these external reminders of the urgency of the holiday.

The farmer's market was lovely. I bought some buckwheat honey from (I think) an Amish lady. (My guest and husband later turned this down when they said it reminded them too much of the scent of manure, but I liked it. Must be my Corvallis roots again.)

All of the stands had apples, but one had such tiny ones, with un-uniform colors and a few bug bites, imperfect-looking, unlike those you see in a store. They were jumbled together in a small basket and I found myself suddenly about to cry. They reminded me of apples we used to pick on the land where I grew up. We had this long pole with a basket on the end attached to a sort of claw. And we would get containers full of apples and run them through a cider press. It was loud and made a wonderful squishy grinding sound while the bees buzzed all around. We stored gallons of the cider in a freezer locker and worked through it during the year. I had to learn to be okay with drinking pulp, but what a wonderful smell!

As an adult I wonder how we found time to do that sort of thing, and I regret that I won't be able to offer anything like that to our child(ren), at least not in that form. But I'm so grateful that the simple act of buying apples brought me to tears this year. If that's all I get from Rosh Hashanah this year, dayenu. (It's enough.)