Before Sukkos, I was commiserating with a local girl about how her family wasn't planning to do anything exciting on Sukkos since her mother gave birth on Erev Yom Kippur (and her father hates planning trips, or something like that).
Another girl from our neighborhood was sitting with us, so I asked her if they had anything planned. She smiled gently and shook her head in all warmth and innocence, saying simply, "We love our sukkah."
I've heard her father hold forth on the evils of daytrips during Sukkos. He explains with fire and bafflement and passion that Sukkos is the culmination of the High Holiday season, and its joyful holiness is embodied (shockingly enough) in the sukkah that we build. "How does it make any sense," he cries, "to go through the entire month of Elul and then Rosh HaShana and then the Ten Days of Repentance and then Yom Kippur, to finally reach the point where you can build a sukkah in which you can be fully surrounded by G-d's presence, and then abandon that sukkah to go on random daytrips??? It's better to just shorten Sukkot from a week to one day if people are just going to waste it!!!" I can follow his logic, but while his position sounds sensible, it's just not my speed.
His daughter's take on his position, however, absolutely resonates with me. A soft smile. A shy light in her eye. "We love our sukkah."
Yes. I completely understand that. I love my sukkah, too; why wouldn't I make the most of it? So this year I did a lot of just sitting in the sukkah, relaxing, chatting, reading, lying in the hammock, being with BSM without really doing much. It was exactly my speed.
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