Let the Frying Begin

Spin a hand-made dreidel. Happy Chanukah!

You might not have noticed me had you walked past my dining room table the night before Chanukah began, but there I was, obscured by rolls of wrap and ribbon. Ticking off names as I went, I tucked and taped stacks of gifts into pretty packages, all the while feeling the pressure of this season of presents.

While frying the first round of latkes, I wondered, with Chanukah gift-giving being such high pressure material, whether it was safe to be standing so close to the flame. Well, that and the fact that I will probably smell of hot oil for the next eight nights no matter how often I shower. 

At best, gifts are cherished for a lifetime. At worst, they are returned to the store. Most, though, land somewhere in between, genially received and appreciated, but presents with little lasting presence nonetheless. For children especially, even the top items on their wish lists tend to be of the moment, savored for a short while, then quickly outgrown and forgotten.

I’m sure I also had wish lists when I was young, things I believed I wanted so much it hurt to imagine not getting them. And I’m certain that there were years I received them. But what I remember most are the gifts that disappointed or bewildered, occasionally even embarrassed – the book I’d already read four times, the hand-knit sweater that was more pillow than cardigan, the new slip given when guests were present.

I’m no pessimist, so why is it that I cannot recall what I so desperately wanted in Chanukahs past, but can remember so many of the things I wish I’d never received?

While frying yet another batch of latkes – this time cheese, not potato – it dawns on me. The experience of getting a gift chosen from the top of my wish list ended with the tearing of the wrapping paper and my first shrieks of delight. Soon, maybe almost immediately, I moved on to wanting something else. As is often the case with a young soul, the longing was much more satisfying than the fulfillment.

The items I did not want, the ones that disappointed, stay with me because they were more than gifts that missed their target. They have had a much longer shelf life, providing a lesson in appreciation and the knowledge that you can’t always get what you want. But even bigger, the unwanted gifts often transformed over time into humorous stories that make up my personal Chanukah lore, the tales that I share with my own children when I give them a gift that fires askew.   

So on I plod, doling out assorted tchotchkes and baked goods to teachers and rebbeim, relatives and friends. And to those most difficult to please, my children, I give hoping that maybe, just maybe, something will result in at least the faintest squeal of delight.

And if not? I will wish that they at least inspire a good story, another layer of who our family is, a lasting presence in the men my boys will, G-d willing, become.   

Chanukah Sameach! Happy Chanukah!

Grandma and Grandpa, all dressed up behind a glass plate

Customized Square Plate

Jeopardy Trumps Granddaughter

For the years that our time here on earth overlapped, my Grandma Sadye lived in the Bronx. The first apartment I remember had heavily-painted kitchen cabinets that never fully closed. Grandpa’s cigar burned in an ashtray, and British hard candies gathered in cut crystal bowls that dotted each and every surface.

Her last apartment created an entirely different collage of memories. Grandma was the tchotchke queen, an acquirer of delicate things: creamy blue Wedgewood, Bennington pottery bought with Grandpa on anniversary trips to Vermont, Rosenthal cake stands, and that crystal, much of it gifted to her by lifelong friends. Above all, though, she cherished Grandpa’s tokens of affection and the cards colored for her by her grandchildren.

She sang to her philodendron and African violets as she took them for walks around the apartment. Who was I to question the source of her green thumb? She hid her jewelry in the freezer and her bus money in her bra, and she never left the house without lipstick, even to go down to the laundry room. She always wore a smile, too, undeterred by the arduous, daily commute on public buses to the nursing home, where she spent her days with my grandfather, who had long forgotten who she was.

When I visited, she would wait in the doorway of her apartment as if the queen were coming for tea and all of my childhood problems, adolescent anxieties, and adult stresses would evaporate. She called me shayne punim, especially when I didn’t feel particularly pretty. She was my guardian angel and I was her pearl and I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Still, I could not call her during the sacred hour when “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” aired. She would perch herself on the couch, sipping her cup of Sanka as Alex provided the first answer. Then she would knit as she watched, her wrinkled hands working the wool into cardigans until Vanna had turned over her last vowel.

And so she was until her first tumble out of bed in the middle of the night, the one which derailed our every confidence in her ability to live alone. There was time in an assisted living out of the Bronx, and later, a brief stay in a nursing home. Then suddenly, she was gone, too short on earth as angels must be, leaving the scent of her violet talcum powder in her wake.

She bequeathed to me her heavy Persian coat, its strength and beauty reminiscent of her. An angel must hide her wings somewhere, I thought, when I noticed the coat was torn in the back beneath the arms. The tailor said, “Sorry, nothing to be done. The wool is too old and fragile.” But I knew it was because he feared he’d clip the wings that she’d hidden for me beneath the monogrammed lining.

They are my yerusha, my inheritance, from her, and it is she who continues to encourage me to fly in my own direction.

In memory of Shayna bat Mariyasha on the occasion of her yahrzeit

Color Me Happy

A garden behind glass for my Shabbat table.

This unseasonal weather has me befuddled. First, we get a snow storm at the end of October, then a string of balmy days leading up to December. Huh? Still confused but very happy, I broke out my flip-flops this morning – I LOVE my flip-lops -- and practically skipped in them to kickboxing. 

Shame, then, that the moment the October snow melted I ran out to tuck my garden in for its long winter nap. I trimmed the roses, pruned the lilacs and dug up the cannas. Threatening to replace them with animal-resistant evergreens, I took a stab – literally – at killing off the row of demolished hostas. They cannot defend themselves against noshing deer, but do they ever have bullish roots.

Against the backdrop of these clear, sunny days, the garden looks wretched. Except for the verdant boxwood, all that remains of its summer glory is a bouquet of what is essentially mulch -- brittle stems, forlorn branches, and mounds of soggy leaves in varying shades of sludge and burnt toast.

It reminds me of the time when one of my sons, then quite young, ran to me clutching my black-and-white baby portrait. He sighed heavily and asked if it had been difficult for me to grow up before there was color.   

Indeed, it would have been, I think, missing the flowers and their colorful chaos.

So I ignored the mountain of unmatched socks and the cooking for Shabbes that needed to be done today and attended instead to preparations for a new garden. I pulled out vintage paper images of flowers and greenery. I finely trimmed the thorns from tea roses and snipped gardenias from their branches. I cut coleus and poppies and dahlias and carnations.

As I delicately planted each of them behind glass, affixing them with sepia-toned decoupage medium, I was distracted only twice. The first time was by the buzz of the dryer, which I ignored. Later, I heard a loud thumping on my roof. Not the scratchy scampering of squirrels, but the sound of something heavier crawling around the perimeter. 

I should have been fearful and concerned. But surrounded by the fierce collection of pointy-tipped scissors in my studio and the cross-jab combo I had practiced during kickboxing, I felt empowered and continued decoupaging. It took a few minutes before I realized it was the guy who mows our lawn cleaning out the gutters, one of the few pre-winter chores that I leave to the professionals.

This warm, sunny weather notwithstanding, the cold winter – along with its dull palette of whites and greys -- is coming. I plan to don my flip-flops and hang out here in my indoor paper garden, even as the snow begins to fall. 

Hope you’ll join me.

What’s On My To-Do List

You know those really together women who work as life coaches, doing it all without breaking a sweat while cheerfully reminding the rest of us how much happier we’d be if we were just a little more like them? Well, G-d bless her, one of them has me on her get organized e-newsletter mailing list.  Each week, she sends me easy Shabbat menu planners and Excel spreadsheets to get a jumpstart on holiday preparations.  

In other words, she offers me a cup of water as I prepare for another lap around the track.   

I’m envious of her calm disposition, but I still love hearing from her. By nature, I’m an organized person, so it’s not that I don’t have lists of my own or that I don’t plan ahead. It’s just that my lists seem to reproduce during the few hours a night I actually sleep. All the lists on the backs of all the junk mail envelopes in the world wouldn’t help me figure out how to tackle everything with the grace she seems to have. I’m treading water, but I’m not making it to the other side of the pool looking like Esther Williams. 

My cyber-penpal, however, surely never forgets why she drove to the kosher butcher in the first place. She doesn’t buy sugar when she needs flour and when she can finally get out to an interesting shiur, she heads to the right location on the right night at the correct time. When erev Shabbat rolls around each week and I’m running hither and thither like a chicken dodging kaparos, I imagine she is already dressed in her finest, ready to greet the Sabbath bride without a trace of kugel batter in her sheitel.

She seems cheerful, readily admitting that without staying on top of things as she does she would surely fall apart, too. Thank G-d she writes only weekly because more frequent communication would force me to join a support group and I would be available to meet only at 3 a.m. in my laundry room between the wash and dry cycles.  I just wish I could keep up with her. 

I thought once that I might reach out to her because a while back I misplaced something vital, and I figured I could use her help in tracking it down. I’d already tried turning over a drinking glass in the kitchen cabinet and putting coins in the pushka, upending bins and emptying drawers, searching under couch cushions and in the pockets of coats not worn since last winter. I’d even enlisted my children, who joined me in my search, sort of, while they continued to play Xbox.

You see, what appears to be my routine, uneventful suburban life of carpools, homework, and housekeeping is more like market day in the shtetl, with its nutty encounters and negotiations, not to mention the pushing and shoving required just to hold onto my own cart. How I got caught up in all of this is a simple matter of faith and acquiescence. I had a plan that seemed quieter and more peaceful; G-d said He had a better, busier, noisier one; I deferred to Him. How I lost myself – the career-focused, put-together, less loopy version—in the chaos is not that great a mystery.

But now, when the places I need to be at the same time and the things I have to accomplish become so numerous they constrict my kishkes, I run downstairs to my studio. I grab some pretty paper and something to decorate – a mirror frame, a plate, that coffee table I never liked in the first place –and set to work. The smell of Mod Podge sends the oxygen rushing back to my brain, bumping me back onto the to-do list. 

To be sure, I’m scribbled in somewhere between “Iron Shabbos shirts” and “Pick up cholent meat,” but I’m there.

Hope you will follow along. Check out my gallery on my website: mypaperedworld.com.