I scanned the row of flapping papers haltingly as if I could slow down the year that had rushed by with opportunities lost

I looked at my daughter’s morah singing chirpily to a silent room and thought There’s another reason I could never teach two-year-olds. Sing solo to a roomful of mothers?!

The same group of toddlers who had spent three weeks belting out the repertoire at home now sat squirming in silence on their mothers’ laps.

My daughter alternated between whispering into my neck “I want to sit on your lap” to playing with the shiny crown on her head to nodding her head in satisfied approval as the brave morah continued with her solo.

Then the show was over and we laughed at the cute outbursts of the slowly warming up children. At that point the morah directed our gaze to the wall right behind me. That’s when my laughter came to an abrupt halt.

All along the wall strung upon clothespins attached to a string were beautifully decorated cardboards each child’s name dancing across the bottom. Affixed to those backgrounds were fluttering scraps of paper taped on top of each other in a carefree mix of pink white lined floral. These were the mitzvah notes the kids had amassed all year. Mitzvah notes! Hazy recollections came back to me of my daughter waving a grocery bill saying “Look! I have a nitza note!” and an even vaguer one of me fumbling for a pen on a rushed morning as my husband held her schoolbag at the front door. Beyond that my memory bank came up empty.

I turned my head with apprehension scanning the row of flapping papers haltingly as if I could slow down the year that had rushed by with opportunities lost. I found mine toward the end. It had three notes positioned creatively in a benevolent effort to bolster the board’s appearance. My first thought: Three? Nice. It could have been worse.

My second thought: How did I miss the boat on this one? Did the morah mention it even once? Vague memories of cheerful handwriting on a parshah sheet came back to me… the kinderlach love bringing in mitzvah notes… we are so proud that we can do mitzvos!

Definitely not something that could have prepared me for the moment of truth that would come nothing there that could have alluded to the great unveiling that would take place when it would be too late to write anymore.