Latkes in February
The old-fashioned winter flu season has torn through our house this month. My 6-year-old has been in and out of school as his immune system develops new skills, tampering with my ability to get work done from my home office, and then I finally got it too. Tensions are as high as our immune systems have been taxed.
I didn’t get nearly enough done today but it’s dinner time. The 10-month old clumsily stumbles behind his shopping-cart-style walking helper like he has a fever too, but despite his nasal mucus-fall into the open pond of his mouth, he’s the only one in the house that hasn’t been running at least a mild fever.
“It’s the small blessings,” I tell myself, smiling — remembering I only got 2 hours of actual work done today.
“What are we gonna have for dinner?” my wife asks, out loud to everyone and no one at the same, wondering what inspiration will strike.
“Latkes!” the 6-year-old says.
My wife and I look at each other with a satisfied “yeah!” reflecting in the mirror of each other’s eyes, recognizing we haven’t had latkes since Chanukah, but love them.
“Yeah. Okay.” We both say.
“Sweet potato latkes!” we all say together.
The 10-month old looks up with a smile from our collective synchrony, or maybe he understands the joy of a midwinter sweet potato latke. He surprises us by moving like he understands some of what we say sometimes — and he said “da da” recently, which means I win at the game of life — but it’s hard to know what he actually understands of everything going on.
“We have two sweet potatoes,” my wife says, but we don’t have any onions.
“And we need apple sauce!” the 6-year-old says.
I pick up my phone. “Nana, mom, can I come over and get an onion?”
“Sure,” she says. “They’re on the left side of the cupboard, at the bottom, in the back,” like I don’t know that from having grown up there and living next door for the last 5 years.
I stop by to get the onion but sit down to kibbutz and watch Godzilla vs. King Kong, until I get a call from my wife wondering how long it takes to get an onion, and then I go back home to get the car keys, jump in the car, run over to Kroger for kosher organic apple sauce, and get home before the small batch of latkes settle to room temperature.
“Apple sauce!” the 6-year-old exclaims.
Latkes aren’t just for Chanukah and there’s no commandment about what kind of potato that’s used. Latkes in February with sweet potatoes is just one of the ways we keep Judaism active and meaningful in our daily lives.
