Rosa’s Firstest Chanukah

Rosa and her mother, Sybil, discussing their upcoming shopping spree to the dollar store.

“Friday is Chanukah!” shouted Rosa to anyone who was within earshot, and she added while jumping up and down on the feather couch in the living room, “and, and, and, it’s my firstest Chanukah ever!”

“No, that’s not quite true,” reminded her mother, Sybil, “you’ve had 6 before this one.”

“But I don’t remember them,” replied Rosa still jumping up and down, “and so, if I don’t remember them, then they don’t count. So, this is my firstest ever Chanukah.”

Sybil wasn’t sure whether to ask Rosa to stop jumping up and down on the couch as it was one of her biggest pet peeves. However, she decided to let it slip this time, because in the past whenever she reprimanded Rosa, it tended to knock the wind out of her sails. What Rosa would then do was to throw her head back and look for her father, who she knew would take her side.

George was in his little office going over the receipts from the business the day before, so Sybil knew she had her limits when he was around. Rosa kept jumping. “And, and, and,” she continued, “Julia is making me my most favourite breakfast of all time. She only makes it once a year.”

No, that wasn’t quite true, but no one challenged her.

Sybil though decided to put her toe in the water, “so is French Toast your favourite breakfast?”

“Yes the bestest ever,” she replied still jumping up and down but getting a slight headache which would cause her to stop soon. Usually, her mother would’ve reprimanded her by now and so she had never reached this stage. Sybil didn’t know that. Rosa sat down on the couch.

“But,” began Sybil who stopped, believing she had dipped her toe in far enough. Timmy took up the rest.

“But,” he continued his mother’s line of thought, “but you don’t like eggs, Rosa. In fact, you say it’s murder.”

“But this is different,” replied Rosa quickly.

“How?” asked her mother.

“Well, Mummy, because you can’t taste the egg. You only taste the challah. And it’s yummy.” Everyone agreed with that assessment, but Timmy was not satisfied with that answer and decided to press on.

“I don’t get it Rosa, it’s still eggs whether you taste them or not. Remember you ate the Falasha’s food with eggs and chicken.”

“No, I didn’t!” Rosa was quick off the mark. “I pushed the eggs aside. And anyway, the only way I like eggs is when they are not alone.”

“But an egg on a bagel is not alone.”

Rosa had the definitive answer. “But you can remove the egg while in challah French Toast you can’t.”

Timmy went back to his Lego set trying to fix the bridge he had carefully built over hours, only to have Rosa check to see if it was sturdy enough to take her weight. Sybil decided it was time for her to plan the menu for the night of Chanukah which once perfected, she would hand to Julia who would be entrusted to do the cooking. Luckily for the Blau family, Julia was an excellent cook even though she was only 16. She had learnt how not to cook at the hands of her mother. It was an easy task. Whatever her mother did, and she could truly burn water, Julia did the opposite.

They had planned a rather large dinner. Sybil thought it was only right because George was the local Rabbi and even though his congregation wasn’t very big, he was seen as an excellent spiritual leader and the father of Julia the excellent cook. No, the Falashas weren’t attending this dinner as they had managed to persuade the Krupnicks to combine their celebrations and have a true Ethiopian celebration. This came after the Rosh Hashanah dinner where the Krupnicks fell in love with Ethiopian food. George and his family had been invited but they decided they wanted to keep the long standing tradition of hosting their own celebration dinner.

It was a week before Chanukah and everyone was caught up with the planning. Even Sybil finally relented and took Rosa to the local dollar store to buy Chanukah gifts for the family. That turned out to be an adventure in itself! Rosa ran around the dollar store much to Sybil’s horror, as she was brought up with shopping at Saks and Neiman Marcus in Short Hills. The sight of her daughter running around the store where nothing was neat and the sales help unhelpful, where shoppers just dropped things anywhere, horrified her. At first, she stood with the look of ‘don’t look at me I have no idea who she is. I found her outside looking sad, so I adopted her.’ But finally, because Rosa was racing around the store and piling items on the counter, Sybil decided to rein her in as she didn’t own the Bank of America.

“We only have six people to buy presents for Rosa.”

“Yes, I know. But we have to give them choices.”

“No, we do not. We just give them one thing and they can return it if they don’t like it.”

Rosa stopped in her tracks and thought for a second. “Ok, Mummy. Here’s your pile. Which presents don’t you want?”

“All of them,” she replied immediately without even looking at the pile.

Rosa at first felt hurt but instead replied, “ok,” and picked up the pile and threw it on the floor to the horror of the other shoppers and the sales help. Sybil was horrified at Rosa’s behaviour as well. But she knew what she had to do. Sybil picked up the stuff off the floor and put it on the counter where the sales clerk had already begun to ring up the items. She was about to object but stopped, when she saw that the entire pile came to $20.

“That’s it?” Sybil said in shock, “that’s it $20 for all this this stuff?”

“Yes $20,” replied the aggravated salesclerk looking at the line waiting to be rung up.

“I’ll tell you what Rosa,” Sybil said as she paid for the pile and then watched in horror as the sales clerk scooped everything up and threw into a plastic bag, “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we take this stuff out to the car and come back in and I’ll do my shopping here as well.”

“Oh,” said Rosa sounding disappointed.

“Why oh young lady?”

“I come here because I get my allowance from you. You get your allowance from dad and it’s much more. We need to go to another store for your shopping.”

“But there’s no Saks or Bloomingdale’s or even Neiman Marcus anywhere close to North Topsail.”

Rosa rolled her eyes, “you’re so ancient Mummy. Nowadays you get on the internet and order stuff and they send it to you.” Rosa then turned to the long line waiting to check out. “This is my firstest Chanukah and the best ever! Happy Chanukah everyone!” Everyone thought she was adorable and laughed.