For some women, preparing for Yom Tov requires more than devising eight days of menus — it means constructing their own succahs
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For the Kids
Since my divorce I’ve realized there are so many things I cannot do on my own. So many things for which I must rely on my friends — and their husbands. Taking take my son to shul Shabbos morning selling my chometz buying arba minim — even reviewing my son’s Gemara homework with him. Come Succos though I was determined to build a succah for my kids. After all which self-respecting boy has no succah to boast of? And I wanted my daughters to feel a part of Succos too — there’s enough lacking in their lives why add a succah to the list?
I would learn how to build a succah. I would! For the kids anything.
The Succos after the divorce my neighbors offered to build the succah. Yanki a teenage neighbor rounded up a crowd and did it from A to Z. But even as I watched them pull the lumber and bamboo from the communal storage area and knock nails into all the right (and some wrong) places I knew their kindness wouldn’t go on forever. That I wouldn’t allow it to go on forever.
Though the neighborhood boys did not seem to enjoy my presence much — what teenager wants an adult watching them? — I stood my ground. Camera in one hand pen and notebook in the other I recorded every step of the succah’s construction determined to do it on my own the following year.
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