Hanukkah

I had begun dreading my own Hanukkah party about three days ago when despondency about this year's attempts to start a family was full on and I thought: good G-d, how am I going to have a party?! All our dreams about what this Hanukkah would look like were upside-down. We were supposed to greet people at the door with our boys in our arms, introducing everyone to our two month old twins. The emptiness and the loneliness were unbearable.

On the logistical side, 34 people responded yes, many more than I usually host, and latkes can't be made in advance: they really lose something when they are not hot off the stove. And to top it all off, Bruno was only doing this because I had wanted to: he is pissed off at G-d and doesn't want to do anything remotely religious. He's been making cracks all week about holidays and religion: very unlike him.

And then the day came. And I actually found it very soothing to put my house in order: to clean it up, place flower vases filled with tiny orange Clementines around and scatter pretty foil coins on the tables and window ledges. I draped some twinkle lights through the wine rack and amongst the fruit in the fruit bowl, and hung paper lanterns in the Tiki room outside with lights inside them. I filled our outdoor fireplace with tea lights and watched them flicker through the window. It felt like a slow deliberate adding of tiny amounts of light and beauty to our world, and it felt nice.

My Mom came an hour early, and we started peeling potatoes, until the entire sink was filled with dirty gray peelings and we were left with a mountain of wet white potatoes. Then the grating and the rinsing off the starch and the squeezing the shreds dry. And the onion, oy the onion that left us with tears streaming down our faces. And me up to my elbows in a vat of 10 times the recipe, mixing potato and onion, flour and egg and salt.

Then the oil and the heat and the friends. And the noise and the children and the eating. And the taking turns at the stove and the smells and the warmth and the crispy salty fried under the cool sweet of sour cream and apple sauce. And the children drawing and reading and playing. And the chaos of the dreidel as children aged 2 to 10 learned to spin and played for pennies. And the quiet moment with the candles. Four Menorahs lined up with four children at the helm: jewish, christian, muslim. And the chanting of the prayer, and the crying of the hostess, and the attempt to find the light, to find the miracle.