Fiona came home from preschool and explained to all of us that Hanukkah was just like Thanksgiving, because both were holidays about freedom of religion, or more specifically, about freedom from religious persecution. Efram has been teaching me all about colonial history, something I know virtually nothing about (It seems I had been confusing Jamestown with Jonestown because I couldn’t figure out why Efram was learning about a suicidal cult.) Those eight nights of oil may have been something to behold, but from what I learned this week, it’s a bloody miracle those pilgrims survived at all.
But this year’s overlap has really given me pause to try and be a little more thankful. It’s not always easy, what with the full cross-country-move-meltdown the kids are subjecting me to. (I don’t know how else to explain the fact the at any given moment, at least one of them is extremely pissed off at me. I know when Sidney is mad at me, because she calls me “Mrs. Lady.”)
I’m thankful for many things, but mostly that M doesn’t mind that sometimes I wake him up in the middle of the night to yell at him about the remote.
I’m also thankful that I no longer smell like a latke, thanks to a three hour shower that was something out of Silkwood.
Even though I spent quite a few years wishing we could trade lives, I am now thankful that I am not Nigella Lawson. I’ve got to come clean here. My little gratitude project has been somewhat hampered by the amount of time I’ve spent worrying about her. Poor dear.
Her life still seems incredibly glamorous. Her eldest son is probably not (as I write this) making homemade hockey goalie gear, which seems to have required the use of two full boxes of Cheerios and all the paper and packing tape in the house. Her younger son did not slice his hand open on a friend’s cracked iPad, requiring a trip to urgent care where it was glued up – something I could have clearly done at home. Her children most likely did not refuse to eat the tortellini soup she made for dinner.
Still, for now I’m glad to be me. I’d actually take my lot at the moment and not Nigella’s. (Ok, maybe just her boobs and kitchens.)
Happy Hanukkah everyone.
