Sukkot

Sukkot was one of Mom’s favorite holidays.  In my memory, the extent of our celebration was building a sukkah, and it was only much later, building our wonderful huge sukkah with the chavurah, that I learned there were rituals to be performed in the sukkah.  Sukkot was a grand tradition in the chavurah – one I loved and happily brought grandchildren to share.  We had a kit for building a sukkah big enough to hold 20 adults, and we had wonderful decorations, bags of garlands and plastic fruit from prior years, and fresh palm fronds, clippings from our yards, and various fresh fruits and vegetables.  It was always a happy gathering, and in my memory it always took place on a perfect fall day.  

But it is the little ramshackle sukkot we built with Mom that are dearest to me.  Whatever else was going on, she was always happy building a sukkah. We built them mostly with found materials, in Amenia, or, at least once, in Bronx Park. Although we didn’t close Amenia for the year until Halloween, Sukkot was our last holiday of the season. I think what Mom loved about Sukkot was the creativity of creating a sukkah, the celebration of things that grow, and the informality of the holiday.  Where Passover had to be done in very specific ways, Sukkot was ad hoc, done with whatever we could find, done outside, with no cooking and no dishes to wash. I think she loved the connection to the season, to the rhythm of growth and harvest, to the changing of the length of days. 

By Sukkot we were already back in school, of course, and the fall weekends in Amenia were bittersweet, reminders of the lost freedom of summer and always too short.  Most weekends we drove back to the city, or later to Mamaroneck, on Sunday nights, getting home in time for the Ed Sullivan show and take-out pizza. But sometimes, especially if the weather was perfect, we stayed over Sunday night. Then we would be up in the dark Monday morning, bundled into the back of the station wagon in PJs.  We’d get into town in daylight and race into the house to throw on school clothes and fling ourselves into the week. 

I’ve been thinking about Mom a lot lately.  It seems like everything connects to memories of her.  My nephew Liam posted a  picture of a glorious spider he found in his yard, and I thought how she would have loved it. I read something about Assyrians, preparing for class on the Apocrypha, and remember her quoting the poem she had learned about the Assyrian army.  And today I saw an otter on the bank of our canal which would have delighted her no end.  Perhaps she’s on my mind more than usual because I’ve just been traveling with Tamar, and any time we sisters are together Mom feels very present.  

Tamar and I had a wonderful trip to the Netherlands.  It’s a place I’ve wanted to visit since I was a kid.  The big cities, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, are big cities – although Amsterdam does have all those great canals. There was nothing about the cities that would have drawn me back.  But the old, small towns were wonderful – the Netherlands of my imagination.  If I could speak Dutch, I could happily retire in Dordrecht.  Unlike the cities, the towns are scrubbed clean, with virtually no litter. There is a sense of order, with similar houses lined up neatly along canals and streets. The towns look prosperous, inhabited by residents who seem to have enormous civic pride.  Everything looks well cared for.  The litter in the canals and on the streets of Amsterdam was quite shocking by comparison.  And here is Mom in my head again, landing on us like a ton of bricks if we dared to drop a candy wrapper on Allerton Avenue (even though everyone else did), or, God help us, a cigarette butt on the grass in Amenia.  Although Mom was a mediocre housekeeper at best, she was a fierce earth keeper. 

Tamar was great to travel with and a river cruise is an ideal way to see the Netherlands.  Although the accommodations and food were first rate, the educational quality of the trip was not what I’d experienced with Elderhostel.  We had walking tours every day, but the guides didn’t have the kind of depth of knowledge I was used to, geared more towards tourists than towards learners.  I was particularly looking forward to the tour of Jewish Amsterdam, but I found that I knew more than the guide did about the history. Still, it was a treat to see the great Sephardic Synagogue, built in 1675, which I knew from reading The Coffee Trader.

The only problem with the trip was being away from Jay and home for so long, and being so many time zones away.  Today, a full week home, I feel like my brain has finally caught up with my body. There are, of course, many other places in the world I’d love to see.  But I think I will be happy with more local travel when we’re settled back in Cooperstown.  I never really thought about having a bucket list, but I do have the feeling that the trip to Holland was the last one on my list that I care about, a little itch left over from childhood. I remember reading Hans Brinker and falling in love with the country rescued from the sea.  And I remember being drawn into the paintings of the Dutch masters of the golden age with their orderly rooms and satisfied people. I’m glad I got a chance to see their world, still alive and clean in Dordrecht.