The Beauty of a New Year

We're celebrating lots of New Years this week.  We dropped our older daughter off at college for her sophomore year a few days ago. As you might imagine, drop off the second year isn't nearly as intense an experience as drop off the first year, but it still took over five hours of driving (each way) plus hours of shopping, organizing, negotiating, and putting together furniture.  The entire time my husband was busy screwing side A into Side B and Piece 1 into Piece 2, I imagined our daughter using this same very cheap furniture in her first apartment after she graduates. Ah, I realized, the difference between Freshman year and the Other years is that you can see beyond...you can see a time your child will be self sufficient, and you can see that she has the confidence and attitude to eventually become that self sufficient adult. Freshman year is the Dress Rehearsal.

Then there's my younger daughter's foray back into high school a few days from now. She'll be a Sophomore this year, a very transitional year, I discovered the first time around, from the young person who walks into high school at fourteen with no more than a middle school education and the I'm-desperate-to-fit-in smile and leaving four years later able to drive, vote, and marry.  Sophomore year, college and adulthood are still a far off dream, testing means the PSATs, which aren't that significant, and all the driving is still up to the weary parents. Sophomores are still children, but they will get the idea soon enough that adulthood is, indeed, closer than they think.

And finally, tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year.  I love the practice of this holiday, a time when we are to reflect inwardly on our personal goals, at areas in which we want to improve, at our faults and our weaknesses. From now until Yom Kippur, in ten days, we will reflect more than usual. Then our slates will get cleared and we'll start again, ready to make better choices this time around.

As someone who has always struggled with her Judaism -- is there a God? Who wrote the Bible? Why does religion cause so much tension, at times? Why should I believe X,Y, and Z? Can I be Jewish without believing X, Y, and Z? -- I still enjoy the celebration of our New Year. I like the food -- you can't go wrong with Challah, apples and honey, and other traditional fare -- and I like the idea of being able to start over, something I have done repeatedly as a mother and a writer. In my next novel, my main character, a twelve year old girl named Hannah, also struggles with her Judaism.  Does she have to be Jewish just because her father is a Rabbi? What about the fact that she is Chinese by birth, and therefore, not biologically Jewish anyway? Can she embrace another faith even though she's not sure it's any "better" than the one she was adopted into?

Questions of faith, of hope, and of the future. These are what are on my mind this new year.