Miracles
You can pull out the slow cooker and make a chicken soup with three color carrots.
You can gift your kids a globe that transforms into a nightlight of glowing constellations.
You can watch their fingers trace its stars.
You can put out floral china teacups and five flavors of tea arranged in the shape of flower petals, and a jar of wildflower honey on the side.
You can place tall beeswax candles that never fully burn next to the quickly extinguished Hanukkah flames.
You can listen to the Nutcracker and look at photographs of your last outing with all of your matriarchs, on the steps of the Philadelphia Academy of Music, your grandmother - of blessed memory - asking if you robbed a bank to get seats so close to the stage — you seemed to know it would be worth the splurge for just this one time.
You can wear the small menorah necklace of your great-grandmother, its flames tiny rubies.
You can contemplate miracles — recalling the words of your mysticism professor, who asked, twenty-five years prior, if you knew how many small miracles had occurred for you to fall asleep and wake up the next day with so much seemingly in place as the day before.
You can wish your loved ones continued strength, light and faith.
Happy Hanukkah.