Tonight, we are enjoying the last moments of summer. Tomorrow, a new school year begins. My daughter will be a first grader. I’ll be returning to teaching art and also taking on a slightly different role — it isn’t new to me exactly, but it’s new for my full-time position. While I’ve been a Jewish social studies teacher of a sort for nearly a decade, it’s formally been for grades 7-12 almost exclusively. Now I’m taking it on for grades 3-6 too. I’m a little nervous, mostly because I find myself yet again writing the curriculum for nearly all of this, but I’m also excited. It’s funny to think about how I was very nearly not a teacher at all, and certainly not always so Jewish (it’s a long story I’ve shared elsewhere on this blog), and now I’m so thoroughly entrenched in Jewish education in my community. It’s a beautiful thing that really warms my heart.

But all of that matters tomorrow. Tonight, we are enjoying the last moments of summer.

This is the first summer in years that has felt truly restorative, physically speaking. I rested. I read books. I painted. I cooked. This may not sound like it would be physically restorative, but, I reorganized much of the house which was way overdue, and now that the house is more tidy and functional, it feels like a more restful place to be in. Most importantly of all, I went to Jerusalem this summer and had a crucially restorative experience in a spiritual sense. I’m still putting together how best to describe that experience, and a blog post on it will be forthcoming once I get there. So stay tuned.

For now, though…for now, we enjoy the last moments of summer.