inscriptions

So, today is the first day of 5771.  Seems like a long time – a year in a far off land in a fairy tale.

As a child, we went to services for the Jewish New Year and sat in the kids section and avoided any active listening to the services that droned on and on.  As an adult, I respected the services and the idea of beginning anew each year, at the start of school, at a time that for some reason feels like an appropriate starting point for renewal and fresh starts.  (You don’t buy new school supplies in January, now do you?  What says new like a blank notebook and sharp pencils?)  But also, as an adult, life has a pesky way of getting complicated.  Divorces, difficult decisions, joblessness, infertility, miscarriage, and death all challenge the idea of new starts.  I sit in synagogue and think of fresh starts, of atoning for sins, for forgiveness, and for asking for redemption from my friends and family, and hope that the next year will be sweet – sweeter – and healthy – healthier – and happy – happier than the last.  I am also old enough to know now that this is not always the case.

The liturgy discusses the concept that God opens a Book of Life on Rosh Hashana and seals it at the close of Yom Kippur.  In these 10 days, She evaluates, ponders, listens, and ultimately inscribes – “Who shall live and who shall die.”  We collectively pray, “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.”  Indeed.

And so, every year of recent memory, with each successive loss, I ask – sadly – not what hope will come but what catastrophe awaits.  What is IN that book anyway?  While waiting to conceive – would my child’s name be in that book?  After miscarriage – I wish I had known that my twins weren’t in the book in the first place.  After Lucy’s death – how could she be in both books – the Book of Life but yet not inscribed for another year?

So today – holding my 2-year old who is indeed completely full of life – so much life – such intensity of life – who clung to me for the beginning of the service through the music and the chanting and the communal prayer – that the Rabbi spoke of a prayer that challenged all of us to remember the power of God.  She recalled an encounter with a congregant who had recently lost a loved one and asked if her mother was one of those not inscribed last year.  The Rabbi said no.  Of course not.  We cannot be that literal.  Did she not have a good year?  Yes, the congregant said. She knew she had limited time and drunk in the life of every day.  Then, the Rabbi continued, she did have life.  If we live one day fully – honestly – with love – than we have fulfilled the inscription.

I yearned for this answer.  Lucy had lived – a long, intense, deeply meaningful day.  She had been inscribed in the Book of Life for August 10 – 11, 2008.  And she lived it to its fullest.

But it’s not enough for me, sadly.  Not enough today.  I should relish in the warm hugs of my daughter.  I should warm my heart with the love of my family.  But my husband needs a job and my stepdaughter needs us and Syd needs everything and I don’t know if simple wishes of “a sweet and healthy new year” are enough to heal the commonplace complications of my life.

For today – this first day of the new year – in this period of awe – it is what I have.  One day of inscription – one day – and then another.  One foot in front of another and another and perhaps all of these singular days we get through will indeed add up to a full, rich, and sweet year.

One can hope.