Two and a half days for Rosh Hashanah.

Half a day for Yom Kippur.

Two and a half days for Sukkot.

Two days for Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.

I’d love to tell you that this is a list of the days that I spent in solemn prayer and reflection over the past month. The truth is that this is actually a list of days I spent stressing about schedules and childcare and all the work I wasn’t getting done because my daughter wasn’t in school. Jewish day school

My little girl is in kindergarten (and she attended a secular preschool), so this is my first year navigating the schedule of fall holidays. We were already planning to be in shul for the first day of Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur (which was on Shabbat anyway), so those were no big deal. And yes, we built a sukkah and ate many of our meals in it, but I definitely didn’t need two school-free days to sit outside and contemplate the changing of the seasons and the fragility of life.

Or did I?

You can read the rest of this post over on Kveller.com