Light all the candles (8th Night of Hanukkah)

menorah on 6th night

It is the 8th night of Hanukkah tonight, and so we're done. Hanukkah came early this year, putting us at a bit of a disconnect with the rest of the country. We'll be well all done before the Christmas frenzy is in full bore. But so it goes some years.

Last year Christmas Eve was the 5th night of Hanukkah, the holidays overlapping nicely. Next year, thanks to simultaneous oddities of the standard western and Hebrew calendars, Hanukkah will actually cross paths with Thanksgiving, beginning the night before!

I'm still weaving in and out of my seasonal ennui, some days lighter, others darker.  Holidays are always about family, family, family and I am missing some members of mine. This week the universe conspired to remind me of my father constantly, now gone nearly three years.

I sat down to get a cup of coffee in the middle of the day on Wednesday and gather my thoughts, when I noticed the man seated next to me in the cafe, heartily enjoying a bowl of potato leak soup, one of my father's favorites. I just had to get a some myself, the silent tears dripping off my face and dropping into the bowl rendering it a bit on the salty side. Just how Dad liked it.

I was thinking about the last months of my father's life, how even up until the very bitter end, when he was barely eating anything, becoming more of a skeleton day by day, I could still often get a little soup into him, if nothing else.

Nabeyake udon or vichyssoise, pasta fagioli or avgolemono, clam chowder or chicken noodle, goulash or gazpacho; the man loved soup. And every time I make some, I conjure Dad up, if just for a little while.

And then on Thursday night, my husband and I got to spend some time with dear friends who are a generation older than we are (but young, so young in spirit and full of life).  I love them to pieces and we had a wonderful dinner and lively conversation and I enjoyed every minute of it while simultaneously feeling so sad that my father is gone and my mother fading fast. And there was our friend Al (OK, I'll name drop: Al Jaffe) a year older than my mother, but still working, still living completely independently (yes, it probably helps that his lovely wife Joyce is a decade younger, but still, that makes her no spring chicken herself).

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OK, this post was supposed to be going up yesterday, on & about the 7th night. I had written this much by Thursday and was going to finish Friday. But then I came home from my intense all day appointment in Brooklyn (the impartial hearing concerning Jacob's schooling) having been pretty much in a bubble all day, to find the news... the school shooting... all anyone can talk about, think about. And I froze.

How can I write about a cheerful holiday, about missing my father who got to live a long, fulfilling  life and become really, really old before he died, in the wake of this immense and senseless tragedy, in the wake of twenty dead children? And yet, there were my thoughts, up until Friday evening.

And so I am walking around dazed and shell shocked today; doing what I have to do, boys to basketball, lighting the final menorah, feeding everybody and washing up the boys weekly five loads of laundry. Because life, for the living keeps going on.

I cannot write about Newtown yet. I don't know if I ever will. There is no sense to be made of it. And, for once, I truly have no words. Except to say that we need vastly better mental health services in America, and with less stigma attached to getting them when we need them.

And so I'll end here, rather abruptly perhaps, because there is no way to stitch this into a smooth and seamless post. There was regular life, skipping, trudging, shuffling along. And then... the thousand ton boulder dropped into the middle of it. And aftermath. There's always aftermath.

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To conclude: last year I shared the Maccabeats & Matisyahu's wonderful Hanukkah song with you, this year I'm sharing a new song from Matisyahu... and hoping everyone had as happy a Hanukkah as possible, in spite of all the insanity and tragedy in the world.

Hanukkah Lights

The light of a thousand menorahs (actually about 20)

This past Sunday was my husband Danny's family's annual Hanukkah party. It's a giant extravaganza that has been going on forever. Early in my husband's childhood, it took place at Aunt and Uncle's homes, and then, as the family grew and grew, in his father's Bronx kosher catering hall.

Since the demise of that, it has continued, every year in varying locations, public and private, the common factors being: large, latkes, and loud.

I married into a BIG family. (Did I mention having come from a tiny one, I had always wanted a bigger family? Did I mention that one should be careful what one wishes for?)

Fortunately they are warm and welcoming, inviting and inclusive. My first experience with the Danny Family Hanukkah Party took place in 1998, the year we began to date. (That year it was in the city, as we took over half of Ben's Kosher Deli.)

It's the tradition in his family for people to bring someone to the party when it gets "serious" because it will be noted that there is a date along and there will be kind-hearted teasing about it. It is also where new engagements, upcoming Bar Mitzvah dates and impending additions to the family will be announced with much joy and congratulations.

As I may have mentioned here before (in last year's Hanukkah party post, as a matter of fact) as we walked to the subway together afterwards, heading back to the Upper West Side where we both lived, I remarked to Dan: "I've never been hugged and kissed by so many people I just met in my life." Like I said, warm and inclusive.

Big cousins = big fun

Since then we have stuffed our faces with latkes in the city and the burbs - both Jersey and Westchester - at cousin's homes, kosher delis, synagogue social halls, seminary dining rooms and hotel banquet halls. This year's constellation was Westchester & hotel. Well suited to the growing cadre of young ones who needed halls to run and play touch football in.

When Ethan and Jake were born there had been a baby lull in the family, the youngest cousin's kid being four, with a huge gang in their late teens to late twenties. But when the boys were nine months old, another little cousin joined the family, and since then every year has seen the addition of one to two new ones.

My estimate is that there were about eighteen in the ten and under crowd on Sunday.

A big part of the tradition is that every family brings a menorah, and they are all lit together at the end of the meal. This year, for the second year in a row, we let Ethan do the actual lighting of ours (sniffle, he's no longer my baby, sniffle).

Ethan chanting the candle-lighting blessing (Hebrew School paying off)

Jacob loves all the lights

There is also an obscenely huge Table of Presents that everybody drops their gifts onto when they come in (not pictured this year, for some reason, my documentary photographer skills falling somewhat short). And the final official event of the party is the present toss, where the gifts are handed out to the (mostly) kids and an unwrapping frenzy takes place amidst squeals of delight.

Presents!

"Thanks, Aunt Patty!"

Jacob groking his Star Wars book

One note of sadness crept into the festivities for me: the absence of my mother. Part of the inclusiveness of Dan's family is that my parents were invited to any and all events. Even though they were from a rather different side of Jewish culture (secular, bohemian) they did often come to the Hanukkah parties and other festivities and were warmly welcomed. 

For the past two years it was lovely to see my mother surrounded by the swirl of family and children, enjoying the scene, even if she wasn't quite sure who anyone besides her two grandsons were.

This year, wheelchair bound and hours of driving away in Long Island, taking her was out of the question. Sigh.

But let's end on a lighter note: Happy Hanukkah to y'all!

Wordless Wednesday: What I did on my Winter Vacation

Actually, this would be more accurately: What WE did on OUR winter vacation.  Because I was never alone, not even for 5 minutes... and as I'm the family photographer, there are never any pictures of ME... so herewith are some highlights:

The day after Christmas, we drove up to our in-laws' house in the Berkshires for a few days, where we go every summer and some winters, too. There was absolutely NO snow - except on the slopes where they make it, of course.

Thanks to Ethan's Aunt (my sister-in-law) we got some free package passes to Butternut that include EVERYTHING: equipment rental, day lift ticket and a group lesson.  The helmet is extra, but I think my son's brains were worth $12 a day, so we sprang for that.

It was awesome, because Ethan really wanted to learn how to ski and neither Dan nor I do, ourselves.

Skiing!

First day, Ethan was in a group of 1, so he got a free private lesson - WIN!

By the 2nd day he was riding the lift

Skiing!

A friend of mine says, if you're not falling you're not learning. Ethan did a lot of learning.

What Jake did while Ethan skied.

Tuesday the 27th was the last night of Hanukkah.  We light the menorah for the last time this year.  You can tell this is at my in-laws' house and not our apartment because it is so nice and new and clutter-free.

Waiting for presents.

All 8 candles

"... and while we are playing, the candles are burning low..."

And, as ever, the views from their windswept hill were stunning, especially at sunset.

End of day sky in Great Barrington

Back in the city, Ethan had a playdate and I had fun shooting the pretty, late afternoon, wintery, city skies with my new favorite toy: instagram.

On January 2nd, the last day of break, we took a jaunt with friends over to the Liberty Science Center, just across the Hudson river, in New Jersey. It's a great hands-on, interactive science museum, and while Jake and I have been there recently, it's been a while for Ethan.

It is so interesting to see how much more the kids are getting into the actual science learning of the exhibits, now that they are older; how they can read the displays themselves, follow the directions, really do investigating and exploring.

Who doesn't love messages and hidden meanings?

Ethan and a friend coloring pixels

(doo doo deeeee doo) Science!

Spaceship or telecommunications teaching module?

Jake LOVED to play with & manipulate his own image.

Some of the signage in the communication exhibit made me sad.

And then it was home, early to bed, school the next morning, How was your vacation? 

And, as usual, I’m linking up to Wordless / Wordful Wednesdays... at Angry Julie Monday... at 5 Minutes for Mom... at live and love...out loud... at Dagmar*s momsense... at Parenting by Dummies. 

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Happy Holidays

From my family to yours:

Coffee Shop Santa, by Jim Steinhardt, New York City, 1949

Whatever you celebrate (we're having a typical '"Jewish Christmas" - Chinese food & a movie - then lighting the menorah because it's the 6th night of Hanukkah), we're wishing you and yours:

The Happiest of Holidays and a kick-ass New Year!

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5th Night of Hanukkah

Hi there, friends. It's December 24th, and while some of you will be thinking "Christmas, Eve, yo!" over here it's the 5th night of Hanukkah, which I am sucking at this year.

We are not having a small group of friends over for latkes and menorah lighting tonight; not hosting the sweet little mostly-kids Hanukkah party as we have done for a number of years running.

Ethan is disappointed, and so am I. But I just... don't have it in me this year. I don't have the energy for the hustle and bustle it takes to pull that together, not even a haimish little party, like ours are.

If our apartment were bigger... if our apartment were tidier on a regular basis... if I had a sitter and more help... if Danny weren't so busy and otherwise occupied... if Jake didn't have autism... then, maybe.

I guess though, this is one of those times I'm actually grateful for Jake's autism because he doesn't care, doesn't really have any expectations of a party.  He's just glad he doesn't have to go to school today and can spend the day with his beloved cat and his video games.

So in order to do something holiday-ish at least here on my blog, I give you the following awesomely kick-ass Hanukkah song. M'kay?

My little Happy Hanukkah to y'all.

And just to prove you don't have to be Jewish to be rocking the Hanukkah thing? I stole borrowed it from Stark.Raving.Mad.Mommy who isn't Jewish at all!  (Well, she was born in Brooklyn which pretty much makes her an honorary Jew.)


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Early Hanukkah

Yesterday my husband's family gathered for their annual giant Hanukkah party extravaganza. On the car ride back from the latke and present fest, Ethan asked his Dad when it started and he calculated that it had been going on since about 1943 or so. Coming from a tiny family like I do, it's nice to be a part of a giant, sprawling, warm, inclusive clan.

Leaving my first ever of these, when Dan and I had been dating for about six months and I was still his "new girlfriend," I told him, "I've never been hugged and kissed by so many people I just met in my life."

In my husband's family, if you love one of them, they love you. It's nice. Exhausting, but nice. (Not a year passes without at least one - and often more - Bar Mitzvah, wedding, landmark birthday or anniversary, and, unfortunately funeral or unveiling. Lots of opportunity for togetherness.)

This year the Sunday that is also Hanukkah just happens to fall on Christmas, and the one after that on New Year's Day, so the party was held a week early.

We brought my mother, of course, who, because of her poor short term memory recognizes nearly no one, but is happy to be out in the swirl of family, with her own grandsons and lots of random (to her) toddlers and babies to boot.

Jacob actually yelled "Happy Hanukkah!" to everyone this year instead of "Merry Christmas!" which he used to be wont to do, as there is so much more of that in the world around him to catch his echolalic attention.

Ethan again asked to be the one to light our family menorah, and this year I finally said yes.

Saying prayers

Jake and my Mom watching

Ethan, lighting the candles

"Real" Hanukkah begins this Tuesday at sundown. But Sunday we got a little sneak preview; an all too rare family outing; a lot of hugs and kisses. A happy togetherness.

Wishing you all Happy Holidays and good times with your families (or without them if they're on the torturesome side)!


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I've Got Stones

Gall Stones, that is.

What?  You thought I was talking about my Mom-balls again?

Yeah, I've got those, too.  Just try to take away a vital service from my autistic son, Jacob.  Mess with him and you will see my giant huevos come out, big time.

I mean, even though my *actual* eggs are kind of over-cooked at this point (see my last post), my metaphorical ones?  My "don't mess with my family" ones?

Outsize and ready for action.

But about that other thing?  Yeah, I'd really like to pretend this isn't happening.

But doubling over in slicing, cramped pain and then making a mad dash to the women's room to gag and dry heave for 10 minutes during my son's basketball practice on Saturday sorta makes that impossible.

I cannot say enough about how happy I am to have the good fortune to have actual medical professionals in my family, both natal and the machatunim.  (That's Yiddish for the whole {damned} family you marry into - you know, the in-laws.)

I had already self diagnosed via the friendly internet on Saturday night.  When I was finally able to stop moaning and sit upright, that is.

But you know?  The internet?  Scary place to do medical research.  Reminds me of that old Nicole Hollander cartoon, the one where Sylvia is reading a book called "Infectious Diseases."  As her daughter warns her to put the book down, she yells out "Oh my god, I've got anthrax!"

In spite of the chance to just completely terrify myself, I kept a mostly level head.

But the problem with hot-knife style searing pain of mind bending proportions in the area of one's major organs?  Hard to believe it's no biggie, not connected to a serious condition requiring immediate medical attention.

But a nice chat with my lovely ER doc cousin, Jessie, in Vermont reassured me that had I come into her ER, she would have been all "Crap! Why is this person in my ER?  It's just a gall bladder attack, nothing dangerous. I had to wake up from my nap for THIS?" (She often works the overnight shift.)

She told me to see my doctor on Monday, went over the warning signs that should send me rushing to the ER for real, and gave me advice for how to get myself comfortable in the meantime (antacid, Tylenol, rest, duh).

And the next day I felt mostly better, which was a mighty good thing, it being the Sunday of my husband's family's annual Big Chanukkah Party.  (I know, not technically Chanukkah anymore.  But?  Shhhhhhh.  It was so early this year.)

What?  You want to see pictures of that?  OK here's a few:

Lighting Grandma Blanche's menorah

Presents Galore!

Grandma Sylvia got a zhu zhu pet

And at this bash?  Yes, indeed, I sidled up to Danny's cousin who happens to be a G.I. with that "you are about to be cornered by a relative with a medical question" look on my face, and he did not back off and disappear, which I took to be the go-ahead sign.  (If you're confused here?  Folks, we're Jewish.  To us "G.I." is short for Gastro-Intestinal as in a doctor's specialist degree, NOT Government Issue as in "G.I. Joe".  Please!)

So I asked cousin David, "Do you do Gall Bladder?"  And he gestured for me to continue.

I described my symptoms, and when I got to the part about the pain finally localizing in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen and then radiating to my back under my shoulder blade, he nodded.  Then he poked at a spot and I yelped and he said to call his office at 8:30 the next morning and they'd get me in right away.

Oh yes, I married into the right family!

So all this is how, yesterday, I came to have my first complete and thorough physical exam in... maybe 10 years?

The problem with being essentially healthy and taking care of multiple elderly parents and young kids with all sorts of issues is that you can neglect your own health big time.  (I *might* have done that.)

Until there's a big wake-up call.  Like, oh, feeling like you're being sliced in half by a ninja out of the clear blue at 2:45 on a Saturday afternoon while your autistic son is attempting to play basketball.

What?  You want to know how the basketball is going?

Yes, I did share my excitement about it, and planned to report back right away.   But life got... busy, you know?

Briefly: it's going well-ish.  (A full post account is coming up soon, I sort-of promise.)  Here, look at some cute pictures (sorry about the odd color, there's weird yellow lights in that gym):

One excited boy

Playing basketball, sort of

So, back to my foray into all things medical yesterday... having been a basically healthy person for 50 years (and believe me, I know how blessedly lucky I am about this, am grateful & do not take it for granted) my experience with medical procedures has been mostly on the sidelines.

Let me tell you, there was a more than slightly surreal quality to be personally undergoing the same diagnostic procedures that I had sat through countless times as the support person for a parent or friend.

Like deja-vu with a side-step.  Like in those dreams when your point of view flashes back and forth between a first and third person perspective, leaving you wondering if you are watching or experiencing the events at hand.

To be the one in the ugly, ill-fitting gown on the table myself?  Very, very weird.

What?  You want pictures of that, too?  Well, here's me waiting for someone to come into the room and do something to me:  

Beige is so NOT my color

So I've now had my first echocardiogram, folks.  And you young people with healthy hearts who have never had to care for someone with cardiac troubles will not get what a big deal this is.  But if you're on my side of the fence, you will understand the thrill, and why I'm bragging:

My ejection fraction?  Was terrific.  (The "ejection fraction" is a measurement of the heart's efficiency at pumping blood, and is severely compromised in Aortic Stenosis, the condition that did my father in.)

I jumped with joy.  (Well, I would have if I weren't laying on a table covered in yucky ultrasound goop.) 

Considering that I am essentially allergic to exercise?   I have no right to have a heart as healthy as mine appears to be.  And I am NOT going to take this for granted.  I am going to thank my lucky stars and work from here on outward to not let this good start turn sour through inactivity and complacency.

I am a 50 year old with young children. I need to do all I can to ensure I am here to care for them through their formative years, to do all that is within my power to not abandon them too young.  (Please hold me to this.  Yell at me if I don't start to take better care of myself in the future.)

I am guessing I have my love of dancing to thank for the positive state of things.  Those years of my late teens through mid-twenties when I went out dancing with wild abandon two or three nights a week.

And the way I danced?  Way aerobic.  I would work up quite a sweat.  Hell, I would often sweat completely through and thoroughly soak my clothes.   Looking back it's a wonder anyone ever dared go home with me afterward, sweatball that I was.

Although it must have helped that, as an old boyfriend put it, I "danced like a girl who likes to fuck."  Ahem.  Guess I wasn't afraid to move my hips.

Sigh.  It's nice thinking about a time when my body was more about pleasure than pain.

But getting back to the icky medical stuff.  I ended my day at the imaging center I had taken my father to many a time before.  Once again, the odd disconnect of shifted perspective.

"You've been a patient here before?"  The receptionist asked the question as a not-question, rhetorical. Clearly I looked familiar.  She thought I was a returner, a repeat customer.

"No" I answer.  Then, because she has raised her eyebrow sceptically I start to question it myself.  "I don't think so..." I stammeringly add, "I've been here so many times, but I'm pretty sure that it was always to bring my father in."

"Well, let's check, then" she says, inputting my statistics into the computer, which spits back... nothing. First timer.  Fill out the thousand forms and bring back the clipboard.

The technician is friendly, chatty, and I don't mind.  Gowned and gelled yet again, I am lying on the table when she swings the monitor around to show me: a solid white almond shaped nugget in the black hole that is my ultrasound gall bladder.  "Stone" she says.

Well, at least I wasn't imagining things.

"Is it a big one?" I ask, watching this thing taking up a good quarter of my gall bladder float around like an jumbo olive in a small martini glass.

"Oh, yeah, I would say that. The good thing is, it's too big to pass through the duct."

"That's a good thing?"

"Yeah, better than the granules, they really hurt going through."

OK, I'm happy to just take her word on that.

So now we wait on the blood-work, schedule another test in a few days (they're going to make my blood a teensy bit radioactive), and then?   Review the findings and evaluate my options.

Apparently, wave a magic wand and make it all go away?  Not among them.  Damn!

I may have a date with a laproscopic surgeon in my near future.  We may wait and see.

And if I do end up having my Gall Bladder removed?  Here's to hoping the guy doing it looks just like Weird Al Yankovic in his classic "Like a Surgeon" video.

Because I want to go under the knife laughing.

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Wordless Wednesday: Happy Chanukkah

For once I am going to let the pictures mostly speak for themselves on Wordless Wednesday.

On Sunday we had a small gathering of kids and their parents in our apartment for a little Chanukkah party.  Latkes and jelly donuts were noshed upon, menorah lit and dreidels spun.  Much chocolate Channukah gelt was consumed by children (large and small).

Me and my mom

The perfect combo: boys, computers and chocolate Chanukkah gelt

Jacob and Grandma Syl on Chanukkah

Ethan and Grandma Syl on Chanukkah

Tonight is the 8th and last night of Chanukkah.  It is the festival of lights, and I wish each and every one of you a full menorah; a bright, warm, and happy holiday season.  L'Chaim.


I’m linking up to Wordless Wednesday at Angry Julie Monday.
I'm also linked to Special Exposure Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Special Needs.

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