Hannukah Miracle

"So what do you guys want for dinner?" I asked my partner and foster kid. I stood over the stove, fastening my apron.

I wasn't expecting any kind of straight answer. And I didn't get one either.

"I don't care." Michaela, with typical adolescent sullenness, aimed the remote at the TV.

"Turn the TV off during dinner." It wasn't a principle I particularly held, just the kind of thing I sensed real parents said to their kids. "Kev, what do you want?"

He shrugged. "I want filet mignon and lobster. But does it make a difference?"

I wanted to snap at him, get into an argument, but I was too tired and hungry for this crap. Instead I looked into the refrigerator, which I still stocked like I was a single person, found a few zucchinis on the cusp of going bad, yanked them out, rummaged for and located some oil and flour in the cupboard, and began slicing the damned squash. If Kev and Michaela were both really nice to me, and apologetic, I might look in the freezer later for some chicken or something. Otherwise, this was it.

I threw the zucchini slices after I'd floured them into the oil in the pan, watched them sizzle, and hoped they'd burn. I got these destructive, or self-destructive, impulses sometimes. Just burn down the damned house and take off. Let someone else figure out what to do about dinner.

I wasn't really supposed to be here, in this relationship. These relationships. They had just sort of happened. Michaela was a neighbor kid I'd stepped up and fostered when no one else would after she was abandoned by her so-called mom. Kev and I had been taken hostage together at a store a couple of years before--I know, totally weird, and a whole different story---and in the aftermath of the whole trauma we'd wound up together. I helped him with his diabetes the best I could, and he kept me from self-destructive impulses the best he could. What you could call a symbiotic relationship.

And now I was in my kitchen/dining room/living room playing house with a pseudo-partner and kid.

"You know what?" Michaela had taken out her phone, I noticed from the corner of my eye as I fried the zucchini. I had the feeling I was also supposed to say something about phones at the dinner table, but I decided to let it go.

"What?" Kev finally asked when I didn't say anything. And now he was looking at his own phone.

"I think this is the first night of Hanukkah." Michaela frowned at the screen.

"No," I said, reflexively. Although she was probably right. Michaela, as a smart teenager, was always right.

"No," Kev agreed. He tapped on his phone for a minute and squinted at it, his expression mirroring Michaela's. "Hanukkah starts tomorrow."

"No, tonight," Michaela said. "Jewish holidays start the night before. The eight nights of Hanukkah. Don't you guys know that?"

Apparently not. Kevin and I both identified as Jews, probably more strongly than most, but were completely nonreligious. Jewish identity is complicated, something Michaela as a non-Jew probably didn't understand.

Although she understood everything.

"Shouldn't we do something?" she said. "I mean, to celebrate?"

I started to again say "no," but this time stopped to think about it. I was supposed to, as her stand-by parent, be instilling some sense of stability and traditions in her. Like I was at all capable of that, but at least I had to try.

"We already have the fried zucchini." Inspired, I shut off the stove before it could burn and started loading the slices on a plate.

Michaela and Kev looked at each other. "Did I miss something?" Kev finally said. "Is zucchini traditional for Hanukkah? I'm pretty sure it's latkes, Sharona. Fried potatoes. From what I remember, anyway."

"No." I was feeling somewhat smug about this, that I knew more on this point, as I put the plate on the table. "Actually, any kind of fried food is okay on Hanukkah. You just think latkes because that's what the Ashkenazic eat." The Jews of central and eastern Europe.

"'Ashkenazim,'" Kev corrected. "Plural. And are you of some kind of higher-status Jewish background, Sharona? Wasn't aware of that."

Michaela interrupted our bickering. "You're supposed to light candles, too."

Kev laughed. "We know," he said. "We just don't have the menorah thing, the candelabra. I don't think we do anyway, do we, Sharona?"

"No," I said. "I think I've got candles somewhere, though. At least one. One's all you need for the first night."

"No, two." Michaela shook her head. "One to light and then the other to light it with. Come on, you guys really don't know these things?"

"Apparently not," Kev said. "She's right, Sharona. The candle you light the other candles with is called the-"

"Shamas," I finished. I just remembered, too. "Servant candle. So I think I can scrounge up two candles. Kev, do you have any matches?"

He hesitated because to say he did would be to admit he still smoked, but then he shrugged and took some out. I retrieved two long tapered candles from the cupboard that someone gave me as a housewarming gift when I bought this place and then found their holders shoved farther back. I brought both the candles and the holders to the table and started to stick the candles in.

"Wait." Michaela was looking at her phone again. "It says here to that you stick the candles in the holders left to right and then kindle them right to left."

Kev snorted. "I never heard that," he said. "Where's it say that, Wikipedia?"

"No." Michaela looked offended at being accused of such poor research methods. "It's on the URJ website."

"And what in hell's the URJ?"

"Union of Reform Judaism. Come on, you guys really don't--?"

I interrupted to stop the bickering. "Michaela, why don't you light the candles since you know so much? Right to left, huh?"

She picked up the matches then paused. "Is it okay if I do it?" she said. "When I'm not Jewish?"

"It's okay," I said, and Kev said at the same time, "It's okay with us."

I shut off the lights while Michaela lit the candles.

I stood across the table from them, watching through the candlelight.

There's something magical about candles. No wonder they're used on so many holidays. The world goes just dark enough to hide all of the ugliness but stays light enough to preserve the beauty. Michaela's and Kev's skin both glowed tawny in the light, almost the same color, although Michaela was African American and Kevin and I white, and their hair was also almost identical shades of dark brown.

I cleared my throat against sudden tightness. "I think there's also a blessing to say."

"Yeah," Kev said. "And Michaela, don't look it up on the URJ or whatever website. I actually know it. It's 'baruk-atah-adonai-alohaynu-melak-ka-holam, asher kidishanu bumitzvah ata ner shel Channukah.'"

I was impressed. "Say it again, slowly."

He did. We repeated it after him, stumbling--me more than Michaela.

"So what's it mean?" Michaela asked.

"What? Oh." Kev thought. "'Blessed is God, ruler of the universe, who gave us the Hanukkah lights.'"

So much Hebrew for something pretty obvious. "That's really good, Kev," I said anyway. He must have made it over to his grandparents' house or whatever more than I had. "I think we can eat now."

"Are you supposed to tell the Hanukkah story or something, too?" Michaela said.

"I think that's Passover," I said. "We can tell it anyway." Great, now I had to remember it. "It was some war victory," I said. "Battle victory."

"Between the ancient Jews and Greeks," Kev said. "Come on, Sharona. Even you must know this."

"I think it was the Assyrians," Michaela said. "Jews and Assyrians, but same difference. They were like Greeks."

Like Greeks, not actual Greeks. I decided to let that pass and said, "And the Greeks, or Assyrians, messed up the Temple. And stole all of the oil."

"No, I think they messed up the oil, too, Sharona," Kev said. "Made it impure or unkosher or whatever."

"But it wasn't all of the oil," Michaela said. "There was enough left--of the good oil, I mean--for one night."

"But it lasted for eight." Ah, yes, now it all came back.

"So that's the story of Hanukkah," Kevin said. "Can we eat now?"

I laughed.

"What?" Kev and Michaela asked together.

"Nothing. I just now remembered some comedian said that all Jewish holidays can basically be summed up as 'they tried to kill us; they failed; let's eat.'"

Kev and Michaela both laughed, but it was really sad. A non-Jew who knew more than a couple of Jews about Hanukkah and not all that much at that.

"I think I know more about Hanukkah than you guys." Michaela echoed my thoughts.

Kev laughed and passed the zucchini things to her. "Take one of these pathetic latke things already and shut up."

He reached for them himself and took about half a dozen. I started, reflexively, to say something about the carbs and diabetes then stopped myself. I'd waved them under his nose; what did I expect?

Pretty lame Hanukkah, but it was the best we could do.

Kev and Michaela were still laughing. "That's probably because you actually paid attention in school," he was saying. "Unlike me and your mother. What'd you do, make menorahs out of construction paper or something? Stick them up around the classroom in a dumb celebration of multiculturalism?"

"No, we lit candles and made potato pancakes and ate them!" Michaela put some zucchini on her plate. "What'd you call them again? What's the Jewish word?"

"Yiddish," Kev corrected. "Latkes. I've said it like ten times."

"That's how many times it takes to learn a new word." She bit into a zucchini piece and wiped off some that fell on her chin. "Now I'll remember."

She sounded just like him. It was scary.

Their heads bent together as they laughed. I watched them through the haze of the flickering lights, all of their sharp corners blurred out.

It wasn't a lame Hanukkah after all. This was the Hanukkah miracle.

I was only supposed to put up with them for a little while, until they could both get on their feet, find a better partner and real parent, and then they'd be out of my life, leaving me with my privacy and freedom again.

And then somehow my love and commitment had grown. Not enough to last forever. But more than eight days. 

Just enough for my whole life.