Preparing for Rosh HaShanah

Rosh HaShanah is only a few days away and is looming large for the usual and unusual reasons.  The usual reasons are always focused on making certain I have the meal ready with all the proper accoutrements.  Including:  Chopped Liver, chicken soup, Noodle Kugel, Brisket, homemade challah--whole wheat of course, tzimes and apples and honey.  Recipes available upon request!  I am a really good cook, though newish to many of the more traditional foods as I didn't eat most of them until recently.  I am a reformed vegetarian (I was a vegetarian for 25 years) so my holiday meals used to be quite different. 

The unusual reason that Rosh HaShanah is looming large is that my life is less settled on this Rosh HaShanah than it has been in past years.  In past years it seemed I had life together..I was working, had my kids, my meals with friends, everything seemed together...though I didn't for many years have a partner in my life after my divorce.  But with my professional life under control, and my kids well...all seemed fine.  Then life blew up for me in many ways this past year  My older son become ill for many months, I started and left a job and have now spent many months searching for the right professional path.  However, I have also found new pathways to follow.  I have become a handspinner and revitalized my knitting and other creative involvements.  I have met a great group of people through my spinning.  My older son is doing better.  Son 2 just went back to school and is deliriously happy and I have just celebrated two years of having a wonderful new man in my life who is totally supportive and loving and kind.   So...yes as knitters say...I have many UFOs (unfinished objects) in my life-with myself being the biggest UFO of all!  Perhaps rather than being a UFO--I am really a work in progress.  I am beginning to take shape...but I need some more work before I am done--a process that I hope I have many, many more years to finish.  All great fiber projects need a few things to keep them going---A willing creator, ready to take the time to turn ordinary things into works of art---some imagination to visualize the possibilities, time, a lot of love, and the understanding, that if the finished object isn't shaping up to be what you imagined...you can modify it, redesign it a bit or unravel it and restart it if necessary.  I can't start my life totally over and frankly I wouldn't give up all the lessons I have learned thus far that have strengthened me.  However, I know that on this Rosh HaShanah, I will be doing some serious re-imaging, reshaping and reconstructing my life by gathering my life's various threads, knitting them together to create an ever larger and hopefully ever more interesting fabric for my life.

My best wishes to you for a year of personal renewal, beauty, health and strength as you knit together your own threads to create your own beautiful fabric for your life.