The first Christmas after my parents divorced is a blur. Trauma gets tucked away as a child, and time thankfully washes it away like a sponge on a blackboard. I do recall I had managed to convince the new school I was going to, to let me skip the second half of fifth grade. It meant I would never get a good grip on World History and Geography.
Genghis Who? His last name is Cohen, he was a Jew right? Having been to China I learned otherwise.
At Dad’s house we celebrated Hanukkah, but without Dad around, it did not happen. My sisters and I tried crafting a miniature menorah with Play-Doh using tiny birthday candles to keep the tradition alive. But our Play-Doh menorah could not hold a candle really, compared to our great grandmother’s pre-WWII solid brass menorah from Kovno, Lithuania with its beautiful tapered, slow burning candles. Eight presents, one for each night, now just forget about it. Everything was green or red with reindeers or with Santa wrapping in boxes and an angel smiled from the top limb, instead of Dad’s six-pointed star he’d put up there on our last Hanakamus.