Rosh Hashanah is a time for forgiveness: asking for it, at least, not necessarily having it granted. Willow doesn't recall much about her father's religion but fragments like that tally with what she remembers of Ira Rosenberg himself; distant, preoccupied. Never a problem requesting favours, attention, affection, but good luck with getting the payoff.
For a while that was Willow's biggest worry, aside from flunking tests and, you know, vampires and hellbeasts, monsters waiting in the dark to kill her or, occasionally, to date her best friends. Sometimes both. Forces of darkness and academic failure aside, though, that was it: the fear that she would end up like her father, intelligence isolating her, no longer caring about friends or family or the fact that she was nothing but an island. Even a fear that she might go too far in the other direction, end up driving everyone away with the pure repulsive force of her personality and god, even her insecurities didn't make any sense!
Willow used to think that was the biggest fear her future could hold. The worst she could possibly be. She knows better now. This year, she has other sins to be forgiven, although she's no longer sure from whom she's requesting absolution, or whether there's even any point in asking.
There is one person, though, who… would she forgive? Maybe. Maybe not. Forgiveness goes with forgetting, and with forgetting the effortless path to perdition. But she would understand, or try to understand. It's always felt like she always would understand, completely.
It is Rosh Hashanah, the new year. Fragments of religious rites recalled: confession of past sins, promises to regain control, to do no harm. Pebbles on a headstone.
"Hey. It's me."