141 - Hanukah

Just a month old, my daughter sleeps in my arms as I hold the shammash and light the first candle of Hanukah, 1977. My husband, snapping the picture, smiles. It is December 5th. Four months later, our world will be turned inside out. On April 7, 1978, I learn I have cancer – advanced Hodgkins’ lymphoma. Cancer was not my address – not the home of a twenty-seven-year-old new mother with a newborn child. We became Maccabees.

But the prognosis was favorable. Diagnosis, chemotherapy, radiation – the doctors assured me of a “cure.” The “cure” lasted from just before Pesach to Hanukah. Less than a year.

Before Pesach, 1979, a year to the day of my initial diagnosis, I had a recurrence. There had been no Hanukah miracle this time. I spent the next year in and out of the hospital with treatments and side effects and after effects. We were Maccabees again.

During Hanukah, 1980, I wrote a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed story about my “special Hanukah gifts” – the modern technologies that had kept me alive (no small accomplishment in those days); the gifts of an understanding and supportive husband; a delightful growing baby; sweet and helpful family and friends; a devoted synagogue community. And for the other gifts I found inside myself – God-given, I was sure – that allowed me to learn to graciously accept all these offerings and grow stronger in the experience of adversity. I wrote about the miracle that had “kept me in life, sustained me, and allowed to reach this season of joy.”

And through the years, as leaning against me,
Your hand in mine, we moved the shammash
To kindle for eight brief nights
The shining, miraculous lights.

But I had spoken too quickly. Now I found myself in the lost years, years of pain and terror. A second recurrence of cancer. Then a third. Then cure, but disability. I learn from the now-grown daughter that they were also my “crabby” years, so involved was I with just existing day to day within the narrowed space of illness and self-inventory.

Then something changed. I began to write, first to help a friend, and then to help myself. I found my prayer voice, the words that God would help me find to consolidate my illness, to reorganize my life, to fill my need to give back.

Now, side by side, we double the lights.
Too brief, too quickly are the candles consumed.
Such short spans are our years,
Too brief a time to honor and praise.

In warm arms I hold you tall against me,
Laughing in the wonder of the miracle
Of who you are,
Praising the Eternal.

The infant is grown and so am I. Through the years, we have discovered again and again the miracle of the light we can allow into our lives despite adversity and illness and change.

One Hundred Forty One

Hanukah

Nes gadol haya sham.
Holy One, Your miracle of light
Vanquished the darkness of defilement,
Embracing us in holiness.

Nissim gedolim hayu po.
Holy One, Your daily miracles
Wait for us, sorting through darkness
To kindle new lights of holiness.

Not eight day lasting oil
But everlasting loyalty and devotion,
Standing as Maccabees against modern blows,
Night terrors of a changing world.

Hold out the single cruse, Holy One,
As we turn our hearts to flame in wonder;
Multiply our ingenuity to see miracles
In this constancy of Your care.

NOTE:
“Nes gadol haya sham” – “A great miracle happened there.” This is the traditional phrase that summarizes [recounts] the Hanukah story.
“Nissim gedolim hayu po” – “Great miracles happen here.” This variation of the phrase reflects my belief in the miracles that can happen around us in our daily lives. Light, in any form, never fails to spread hope and joy.