Reflections at the start of autumn
This is always a particularly reflective time of year for me. There’s the collective reflection that the start of autumn and the new academic year brings, however long it is since you or your children have been in formal education. The feeling that a reassessment, or a resetting, is required after the long, at times delightfully unhurried, days of summer. The sense that purpose and direction require some inspection, exploration and maybe redirection.
A time for cultural reflection
Then there’s the cultural reflection that comes with my Jewish heritage, something I’ve never written about before here.
Because the Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, ie based on the cycles of both the sun and the moon, whereas the Gregorian calendar is purely solar, the dates of our festivals and holy days changes each year. So the dates for the two most significant days in the Jewish calendar - the New Year and, ten days later, Yom Kippur, the day when we fast and reflect on and ask forgiveness for our transgressions over the previous year - are different every year (ask any Jew on any given year and they’ll always say they’re either early or late. I’m not sure any of us know when exactly ‘on time’ is!)
I’m a traditionally, rather than especially religiously, observant Jew, but New Year and Yom Kippur are important for me for a number of reasons, that have been added to this year in a very significant way.
It’s not just that they’re days that have punctuated my annual life since I was born, and so therefore hold a myriad of childhood and adult memories and shared family times. Or that, as I’ve got older I’ve come to value the time and focus they bring to the process of reflection. (Can’t say I was a huge fan of the seemingly endless synagogue services when I was young. Other than the chance they gave me to meet up with and chat to my mates, accompanied by lots of disapproving tutting from the adults).
And reflection of a more personal nature
It’s also that this ten day period has taken on a much more melancholy personal reflection in the past five years. Because five years ago, right between New Year and Yom Kippur, my husband collapsed and died of a heart attack. We had been separated but not divorced, and remained the closest of friends and devoted parents to our two adult daughters. The separation and the fact that we both had other partners added a dimension of complexity to what happened, but not to the utter devastation we all experienced. All of us - the girls, their wonderful partners (now both husbands), and our partners - clung to each other in our shared, heartbroken, grief and disbelief.
Then, this year, on the eve of New Year, my third little granddaughter arrived in the world. What should have been a moment of pure delight, turned into a time of anxiety and uncertainty with her being rushed into a specialist Neo-natal intensive care unit. Thanks to the magnificent care she received, she is home now and doing well and we are all enjoying relieved and thankful cuddles with the newest member of the family.
How it all adds up
So you see, it all adds up to a time of year when I count my multitude of blessings for sure, but also when I especially miss my husband not being here to share so many of them with me and his beloved girls (he would have been the most adoring and wonderfully playful grandfather), and when I reflect on the direction my life has taken over the past year - and especially over this past tumultuous year - and contemplate the goals and objectives I want to point myself in the direction of in the year to come.
I’ll be honest and say that I’m struggling right now to see where those intentions lie. So I’m taking time to remind myself about the things and people I most value and that help me live my life in the best way I can, and the life lessons I’ve learnt so far (and especially the last one on the list).
I'm doing my best to tap into the composure to give in to the the stuff I have no control over (I admit that’s still very much a work in progress), and be gentle enough not to beat myself up for not striding forward with energy and purpose.
Sometimes small, grateful, weary, tentative, hopeful steps are all you can manage. And on reflection, you know what? That’s fine.
Other reflective posts you’ll enjoy
My hopes for my newly born granddaughter (and the two that have followed her)
