Anyway you look at it, its a miracle

This photo was taken at a department store somewhere in Cleveland. I was 5 or 6 years old. According to my father as the photo was being snapped, supposedly I was telling Santa that we were Jewish and didn't celebrate Christmas. This was true. I have no idea why my father would have taken us to see Santa as he was very strict about being Jewish....we DID NOT have a tree, we did NOT celebrate Christmas. I felt sadly left out of the festivities, although Cleveland Heights was a comfortable place to grow up Jewish. Anyway the miracle of Chanukah (as I learned to spell it at Rabbi Silver's temple), is that after the trashing of the Temple, there was only enough oil to keep the Everlasting Light at the Ark burning for one night. It would take 8 days to go and then return from where oil could be purchased. It was a great miracle that the tiny bit of oil kept burning for the entire time. Christmas celebrates the miracle of the birth of the Savior. So this is truely a miraculous season,no? The Facebook version of Chanukah is that even though the cell phone battery was almost dead, it lasted for 8 days. I remember lighting the candles as a kid, as a parent, and lighting the 8th candle last night. I always wanted a Christmas tree though, I love sparkling lights, piney smells, and beautiful ornaments. I never had one until I was in my 40's. I echoed my Dad, "You are Jewish, Jewish people do NOT have trees." When my daughter brought home her college roommate, who had recently lost her father, my husband and son put up a tree, "only to make her comfortable". Ever after it became "why not we did it before?" I have to say, I enjoy the beauty, the smell, the festivity;the stuff.Chanukah is not the important holiday within the framework of Judaism that Christmas is to Chrisianity but it has been the Jewish answer to the season. I also loved to celebrate the Solstice as the home of friends,smaller gifts were exchanged, with meaningful thoughts for those who received them. Right,wrong, I don't know, my former Rabbi said that ;Jews don't have trees because they didn't think of them first." Another friend says I am an uninformed Jew. Some years I do the tree, some years I don't, this year I needed the smell and the glitter. Its all okay, it is all a miracle, no matter what or how one celebrates. It is the miracle of the season that I hope we are celebrating. If one looks back at Pagan times,the miracle was that even after the darkest, longest night, the dark hours grew shorter again. We renew our lives, through daylight,through oil, through a belief that the Messiah has come....anyway you look at it, its a miracle. God is bigger than all of this, of us, and I believe exists. Happy holidays.

Happy birthday Lynda!

I am amazed at my own life sometimes. My friend Lynda turned 61 last week. It is hard for me to believe. I am 4 years older than her, although come February, I will be 5 years older. Time has flown;we don't seem much older to ourselves. We still send birthday cards to each other that remind us that we are "still hot", as least she is.I don't mean menopausal either, I mean attractive. What kind of brought this time passage to some sort of perspective was when I realized that I met Lynda when she was the same age as my son, who is 36 now. How can this be? Not only are we older but our "kids" are older, we are both Grandmothers....I don't feel any older at all. This truely is the basis of this blog, my musings....I think about things all the time, I just don't always get around to writing about them. I am blessed to have friends that have stayed in my life for most of it! I guess the thing that got me here was the realization that a friend I made as an adult is still a friend and we are older adults....wha happened? Time passed, and it is good and sweet and life has given me more gifts than I can possibly handle. Thanks Lynda for being one of them, and for all the laughs, for all the times you listened, for the good advice and the friendship.