the happy holidays

And on the 7th night of Channukah I went to meet my Grandmother for dinner with my sister.

We arrived exactly on time (5:15 pm) and grandma was late. My Grandmother is never late. She is a beautiful elegant woman. Her face and eyes are slightly moist like glitter when she tells stories. She is a master story teller with a story for every single word, perhaps it is her Yiddish upbringing, or maybe coming from a different era of entertaining, but mostly i think it is her and her spectacular inner world.

Grandma enters and passes our table looking flustered in her black polar bear knee length jacket. Her cheeks are rosy from the cold and her eyelashes always twirl up a little framing her playful eyes.

“We are here,” I say. “Oh girls, I am so sorry I am late, you will never believe what happened,” she says.

She shows us her wrist watch like we have never seen one before.
As if we didn’t know a clock runs on gears and sprockets that from time to time need to be wound. As if people only from a certain era have the privilege of time stopping.

“It’s o.k.” we ordered already. We were eating dinner before going to see a play, my Gandmother’s gifting-tradition for as long as I can remember celebrating anything.

“Oh dear, I need to call Grandpa, I forgot to light the Chanukah menorah.” Grandma its o.k. you can light it when you get home.” She is not pleased with this answer and gets up to speak with the hostess. I see her motioning to the tea lights on the table asking for eight and explaining that she will have to leave them on the table and nobody can touch them until tomorrow. The waitress apologizes and shakes her head no.

Grandma comes back to the table looking worried and begins calling Grandpa again. The hostess returns with a little electric candle in her hand saying she needs to light this evening’s candle, perhaps we would like to do it and say the blessings.

Grandma jumps up and says, “Oh yes, come on girls.” We follow Grandma to the front of the restaurant one of us on each of her sides. We lean over the juice bar and huddle close as she screws in the light. She begins singing and we join in as does the young girl behind the juice bar and the table behind us.

The electric flame glows though it is our faces that are warm and burn. The blessing says that “throughout the eight days of Chanukah, these lights are sacred, and we are not permitted to make use of them, but only to look at them, in order to offer thanks and praise for the miracle.” From my belly tonight I can say, Amen.

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