It’s been one heck of a year.

As I sit down to write this, I can smell the soup I threw together earlier today, on a whim of quick inspiration and uncharacteristic organisation. It’s not your typical chicken soup, brewed over half the day with real chicken and good, wholesome veggies.

This one is a bit different. In lockdown desperation, I pulled a chicken flavoured noodle soup from the internet, and whipped it up in less than an hour, using chicken stock instead of real chicken and adding pieces of chicken breast thrown in as a last attempt to keep it true-blue and authentic.

It came out delicious.

If nothing else, this soup is an outright testament to what we’ve all grown accustomed to do in these endless lockdowns: Just. Make. Do. When good enough is the only way to go, I’ve made do with a lot of things this past year, and not just in the kitchen. We all have. It’s been a makeshift year, this one. We’ve had to settle for less, in the process of aiming for the greater good, hanging onto the knowledge that our situation is temporary, and it too shall pass.

So while I take my hat off to all the women out there braiding fresh loaves of Challah, and making batches upon batches of freshly baked honey cakes, I’m also admiring all of us for just getting by, for getting through this crazy, mixed up, mash up of a year.

Rosh Hashana has never been a favourite festival of mine. I don’t find it particularly lighthearted. In fact, if you really believe what we grew up being taught, it’s actually one of the most serious days in the Jewish calendar as it’s when our fate for the year to come is decided.

But, like everything else, this year is different. This year there’ll be no Shul or public gatherings. Instead, I made a makeshift chicken soup, and the dress I bought online for the occasion is suspended somewhere in postal service land, and won’t make it in time. This year, it’s still all about making do, and doing the bare minimum just to get by.

But, Rosh Hashana isn’t Rosh Hashana without a dose of added sweetness. So the honey is still there, the apples, the dipping, the honey cakes and the round Challah’s.

And there’s a hint of another type of sweetness, too. The air is filled with the scent of fresh flowers. Spring has arrived, and with it days of pure sunshine. The streets are humming with the promise of a happy summer, And there is a feeling of hope underneath it all for what’s yet to come.

So yes, it’s been a makeshift year. And yes, we’ve had to make do, over and over again. But maybe through it all, we’ve come through the year stronger.

Maybe it’s not about how authentic your chicken soup is as much as it’s about it being there on the stove simmering.

It hasn’t been an easy year, not on any account, but we’ve made it this far. This coming year is bound to be better.

I’m hanging in there — just. Are you?