Me and the Mother of Prayer

We are coming up on five years since I first heard the story of Hannah chanted.

No one with neurological and trauma issues deals well with crowds.  From my first steps into an observant life, my custom was always to celebrate the first day of Rosh Hashanah with my small Renewal congregation, and the second day with the few day-two diehards of my Traditional congregation.

That meant I never got to hear the one time of year we chant out loud the haftorah story of Hannah, mother of our way of praying.  Renewal gatherings skip the haftorah, and at Traditional services there's a different haftorah on day two.  And as the years of infertility wore on, year after year, not being able to hear the story of barren, blessed Hannah cut deeper and deeper.

So finally, I gave up my little Renewal Rosh Hashanah and braved the crowds to hear Hannah chanted from the bimah.

And the next year, I did it again, sobbing in the back row as a friend on the bimah sang verse after verse directly to me and my swollen pregnant belly.

My son was born, whole and healthy despite all my battles with disease, during Lekh Lekha, the third Torah portion of that new year.

I have not heard Hannah chanted again since.  It's hard doing High Holy Day services with a baby, with a toddler.  It's hard when you don't live in the neighborhood, it's hard when your partner cannot be by your side.  You come for what you can and let the rest go.

Last week I opened the story of Hannah for the first time in years.  My son will be a preschooler, in programming, and I will alone in service once again, and I will hear Hannah for the third time.  
My eyes trailed over the course of the story as they did when I was a child, and I relieved my childhood agony at the way Hannah wanted a child so badly and then let him go.  Hannah's story has always been my Akedah; my faith shaken to the core by the question of how the Lord could ever accept the sacrifice of the weaned son and the mother who walked away with her arms empty again.

That's when it hit me.
Hannah brought Shmuel to his adult service after he had stopped nursing.
This is the first Rosh Hashanah since my boichik stopped nursing.  And that is why I will be in services-- because I will be alone.

Our time to have our time has ended.