Like most kabbalos in my life, it started with great expectations, but in the back of my head I didn’t really expect much of it

September of 2008. The weather is perfect — not too hot, not too cold. The school year has just begun, so you haven’t given up yet, and your new shoes are still shiny and worth it, despite the break-in blister.

I’d just started my second year of teaching at Masores High School. I was 20. The world was my oyster, and I was going to be a teacher, then a principal, then open my own school, as well as become a rebbetzin (yeah, I know, I never got past the first stage — don’t rub it in).

A day or so after Rosh Hashanah, after picking up a fresh stash of books I had on hold from the library, I walked to work, up East 16th and along Avenue I to Ocean Avenue. As I walked, a thought meandered into my brain. Rosh Hashanah has just passed. I should probably take something on for Aseres Yemei Teshuvah.

But what?

I thought of where I’d just come from, and of the person I planned on being in the future. They weren’t entirely compatible. Rebbetzins reading Chick-Lit? Kinda nisht. So just for this Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, I wouldn’t read novels. It was just for then, because really, I was an English teacher, how could I not read novels?

I thought of the book I had in my bag, a newish novel. I’d waited a little while for it to come through the hold system. I could wait just a little longer. Maybe.

Like most kabbalos in my life, it started with great expectations, but in the back of my head I didn’t really expect much of it.