By the time you read this, your supermarket bills have gone down considerably. You probably have not had or thought about having company, and your laundry is pretty much back to a normal schedule (unless, of course, you don’t do laundry during Chol Hamoed and then that’s an entirely different column). I know the holidays are over. Cooking marathons, eating marathons, praying marathons—they have all come to an end for the time being. But, I have trouble letting things go. No, really, I do. And I have an issue I need to address. It’s about the whole sukkah thing. I am beginning to think that maybe I have been off the last two weeks so I would not write about this, but now I am back and I am ready to discuss certain issues.

I will start by saying that in the 14 years we have been the proud owners of a sukkah, this is the first year that did not require us to beg friends or neighbors to help us assemble it. Let me rephrase: this is the first year that no one heard my screaming at husband #1 to put up the sukkah, so no one ran over to make sure I didn’t have a weapon in my hand. You see, the problem is we live on a block and are surrounded by folks who put their sukkahs up really early and really quickly and really by themselves. That is not the case in our happy household. Don’t get me wrong; we have tried to put it up ourselves and we have proof. On almost every pole and every panel of canvas you will see writing in permanent marker. “Back corner,” “First pole,” “Swing set side.” Some have numbers, all were supposed to help us the following year. Didn’t work. At all. One year, son #2 even made a drawing for us to follow. Nope. One year we hired some kids to put it together for us. Nope. They left. It was so bad they didn’t even ask to be compensated for their time. Sometimes I wonder if our difficult sukkah is supposed to model the difficult people who own it. Perhaps that is just me projecting.

Anyway, this year, I am very proud to say, son #2 basically put the whole thing together by himself. This would make perfect sense because next year he is going to be in Israel and then, of course, we are back to square one, but I will concentrate on the positive for now. He did a great job and then sons #1 and 3 and their father came in as the closers and put the finishing touches on it. I, of course, being one of the men in the house, did the lights and the remaining essentials, bamboo, decorations, etc., but that is just par for the course. I am sure I have previously mentioned that when the boys were mere toddlers and mommy was up on a ladder putting the bamboo on by herself, she said to the boys, “If mommy falls off of the ladder, dial 911.” And they would stand with their big, blue eyes looking at their big, blue-eyed mommy and have the phone in hand at the ready. Fortunately, it never came to that.

So the sukkah went up. Husband #1 was happy because we were out for the night meals and we did not have to keep the lights on, because, as you know, a penny saved, is a penny that goes towards tuition, or therapy, or both! And because we weren’t having so much company, I did not put up the Christmas lights, even though they are so pretty and sparkly, and we kept the decorations to a tasteful minimum.

In any event, let us move this story along to the Shabbos of the impending hurricane. Weather anxiety in another one of my “things,” and the thought of a hurricane and a sukkah and company and power outages was just not boding well with me. Fortunately, we had the nicest hurricane weather ever known to man and though it was raining Friday night, we were able to eat in the freezing, damp sukkah on Shabbos. Baruch Hashem. So the boys come home and say, “The rabbi said we have to eat in the sukkah; we told him that you wouldn’t be happy about it, but he said you aren’t obligated to eat in the sukkah anyway, so you can go inside.” And then the light bulb went off. Ladies, if we don’t have to eat in the sukkah, I am thinking that we shouldn’t have to cook the food that the men have to eat in the sukkah. Who is with me? I would like to start a revolution. Please let me know if you are interested. Hope you all enjoyed/survived this very pleasant holiday season. And if you need a sukkah in December, mine will probably still be up.

Banji Ganchrow is happy to report that she did not get any fatter over the holidays. Walking over 20 miles probably had something to do with it.

By Banji Latkin Ganchrow