I feel the carefree spirit of summer slipping away and my thoughts turn to Rosh Hashana. I think about all the things I have to daven for. And then I remember the first time I davened.

I was six years old, standing at the window and looking out at the empty, pebble-covered lot behind our apartment building on Sixth Street. The sky above it was clear.

I looked up. I knew Hashem lived in the sky. “Please make Abba better,” I said. “Please let him come home.” I didn’t know what more to say, so I just said it again and again.

Looking back, perhaps I remember the lot so clearly because it seemed to hold the same emptiness I felt without my father.

It was the mid 1960s, when a heart attack could mean six weeks in the hospital. Six weeks was an awfully long time for a small child.

My father was a builder who started work early in the morning and was usually home by mid-afternoon. Then we had our routine. He’d settle me on his lap, facing him, and sing the Yiddish songs he knew from the alte heim. My favorite was “Sha, Shtil, Mach Nisht Kein Gerider.” His voice was deep and melodious. With each repetition, the tempo grew faster and sillier, until we collapsed into laughter.

The window where I stood talking to Hashem was in my parents’ room—the same room where Abba and I sang together.

I remember walking hand in hand with my father to shul one Shabbos morning and asking if he would buy me a swing set. He didn’t answer. I asked again. This time he smiled and said, “One day.”

That was enough for me. If my father said, “One day,” I believed him. I never asked again.

At six, I didn’t understand what a heart attack meant. All I knew was that I missed Abba and didn’t know when he was coming home.

Each day felt the same. Instead of sitting on Abba’s lap singing “Sha Shtil,” I went to the window, telling Hashem how much I missed him and asking Him to bring Abba home.

I never stopped waiting. Then one day, he came home.

I remember that morning as clearly as I remember talking to Hashem at the window. My mother had taken out one of my father’s suits and left the apartment with it on a hanger. This time, I stood at the window facing the front of the house.

Our babysitter took a photograph as my father walked through the front door. We stood together in the doorway, his left arm draped around my shoulder, his right hand holding mine. I looked up at him, beaming. He looked down at me, his smile matching mine.

Somewhere inside me is that little girl at the window who still believes her Father is listening.

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Michelle Halle, LCSW is a psychotherapist with a practice in Lakewood and writes about faith, family, and the experiences that shape us.