The First Night in the Sukkah

Yael's father loved building the sukkah. Not decorating it. Building it. Every year he measured, reinforced, checked again.

"A sukkah needs to be stable," he would say.

Yael would laugh. "Stable? It's four boards and a roof made of branches."

"Exactly," he'd answer. "That's why you build it well."

Years later, after he was gone, Yael almost skipped the sukkah. She didn't have the strength. Not for the poles. Not for the branches. Not for the memories. But her son asked. "Just a small one," he said.

So they built a simple sukkah in the yard.

On the first night a strong wind came up. The cloth walls snapped. Branches slipped from the roof. Yael woke again and again at every small sound. Finally she went outside.

Her son was already sitting there, wrapped in a blanket.

"Aren't you afraid it'll fall?" she asked.

He shrugged. "A little."

"So why are you out here?"

He looked at her as if the answer were obvious. "Because you're here."

Yael said nothing. All those years she had believed her father loved Sukkot because of the building. Suddenly she understood he may have loved it for what a sukkah does not have. No solid walls. No real roof. No promise that nothing will move. Just a family sitting together inside something temporary.

The wind kept blowing. The sukkah creaked. Yael sat down beside her son. And for the first time in a long while, she stopped trying to hold everything together. She simply stayed there. With him. Under the sky.