This week has been Chanukkah, the festival of lights, starting last Saturday night with friends visiting and finishing tonight, the next Saturday when I am writing this.  For those of you who aren’t Jewish, it has nothing to do with Christmas and is in fact a minor holiday.  Most people who don’t live in the tropics have some celebration involving fire or light at the darkest point in their year. Channukah moves around every year, because like all Jewish holidays, it’s governed by the moon.  It celebrates a victory when for once a Jewish rebellion succeeded. Didn’t happen all that often. Eventually the Romans clobbered us, hence the diaspora when they exiled us from our home. The first night of Chanukkah is supposed to be joyous, but for me it always evokes mixed feelings since my mother died on the first night of Channukah while we were in the air flying down to be with her after she suffered a stroke.   So I celebrate, light the first two candles and also her yahrzeit candle that burns for 26 hours in the bathtub, scandalizing the cats.  When we bathe, I move it to the bidet.  Then when the water is out, back into the tub.  I am afraid of setting fire to the house. It was tipped over this year in a mad mouse chase in the middle of the night.  Three cats took part, Puck, Mingus and Xena.  Xena got it finally, killed it and left it for Woody as a gift.  I had to relight the yahrzeit candle. We don’t do eight presents, but only one the first or second night and sometimes another the eighth and last night. I didn’t make latkes, potato pancakes, because I am damned if I am going to stand there making pancake after pancake while everybody else is gobbling them and chatting and having a great time.  Instead I made potato kugel, which is quite fatty enough and delicious anyhow.  I am not at all fond of martyrdom.  The kugel came out great. The cats are adjusting to the absence of Malkah. Efi, her adopted daughter,  is having the hardest time, but she is eating again and slowly coming out of her depression. There is a grand distraction for them. We have a tree extravagantly decorated, mostly with animals and birds and garden ornaments, like ones shaped and colored like eggplants, cukes, corn, garlic, plums, apples, tomatoes.  My mother insisted on a tree. She said it wasn’t Christian but pagan and a celebration of life returning. Although my religious upbringing was Orthodox from my grandmother, my mother had felt deprived as a poor child surrounded by people celebrating Christmas. When I left home, I dropped it all. It never occurred to me to have a tree. But when she was dying, she gave me her old ornaments.  When we came home on the plane with her ashes [my father had her cremated], we chopped down a pitch pine on our land, decorated it with her ornaments and some of my jewelry and some shells.  Every year now we have a big fancy tree in her memory, because she enjoyed it so much, and now so do I.  And the cats sure do.The cats are fascinated by the tree. The lower third has unbreakable ornaments, so it doesn’t  matter if they pull them off or knock them down.  There are usually four or five “kills” on the floor every morning.  Mingus tried to claim the tree, but he couldn’t succeed and has given up the battle.  He has to share it with everybody else. We are still eating leeks, Chinese cabbage, kale, parsnips and Brussels sprouts from the garden.  We’re beginning to plan the menu for our annual Solstice Party next Friday, the 21^st.  We’re expecting 28 or 30 this year.