Days when things didn’t go exactly according to schedule weren’t the happiest of days, even when those were supposed to be the days of “v’samachta b’Chagecha.” In fact, for a long time, the two hardest days of the year for me were Hoshana Rabbah and Simchas Torah.
By the time Hoshana Rabbah rolled around, the kids had been home from school more or less since Yom Kippur, and any semblance of routine had long but disappeared. And Hoshana Rabbah has the distinction of being the only day of the year that is both Erev Yom Tov and Yom Tov — the culmination of the Yamim Noraim, no less. So on top of preparing, serving, and clearing off a seudah, there’s also pre-Yom Tov cooking and cleaning. (Not to mention davening and doing teshuvah, but who has time for that, with a houseful of kids and guests?)
Then comes Simchas Torah. Did someone say something about simchah? I’ll be b’simchah when school starts again and bedtime reappears, I’d think to myself while trying to get the kids dressed in their Yom Tov finery and get them out to shul all by myself. Once in shul, I’d spend my time running around the women’s section chasing a toddler, while jiggling an infant on my hip and trying to keep the kids’ tangy-taffy hands off my dry-clean-only outfit, the one that I reserve for the two or three times a year that I actually make it to shul.
It’s hard to enjoy the hakafos in that state, especially since I’m not the type to push myself to the front, through the layers of women trying to get a glimpse of the dancing.
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