Bring on the Thanksgiving noodle kugel

27 Nov 2010 2 Comments

by Being Jewish in Hawaii in Family, Food, Holiday Tags: , , , ,

In the 20 years I have lived in Hawaii I  only traveled to the mainland twice to spend Thanksgiving with family. Once I met my mother and youngest sister in L.A.. When my daughter was a toddler,  I took her to Kansas City to share the holiday with my mother and oldest sister.

Both were disastrous. Not in the family dynamics kind of way, when one part of the family is not speaking to another part so you can’t sit them next to each other at the table type of thing. We always enjoy the company. It was more about the logistics.

From L.A., my plane was terribly delayed and I did not make it home in time for work on Monday. That soured me on peak travel dates forever after.

In Kansas City it was cold. “Duh,” you might respond. “The Midwest in November? Hellooooo.”

Yes, I knew it would be cold. Yes, I took warm clothes. My mom bought cute little puffy snow jackets at Steinmart for my daughter and greeted us with gift sets that included ear muffs and warm woolen gloves and caps suitable for the most fashionable of bunnies on the slopes. We were suitably armed.

However, I did not take into consideration the discomfort  of  my three-year-old who was used to wearing slippers all year round and who had never experienced the stifling feeling of  thick socks or a jacket that looked like it was made of jet puffed marshmallows sewn together by the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

She was fine when we were in the house. My mom turned up the heat and my daughter did not have to don layer after thick layer for protection against the elements. She was free. It just turned out hard to  hard to go anywhere without a fuss. So we stayed home.

One year my family came here. They stayed at Ko Olina. We had Thanksgiving at the Ihilani. All was good.

I have gotten used to not being together on holidays. I’ve comfortably absorbed into the local families I know and put together one of my own in the past few years.

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Makaha with the Suisos. One of our favorite places and definitely some of our favorite people.

I knew I would not miss my mother due to distance. I did know that I would miss her because I miss her every day. Because it is a special occasion and I would not be able to call and say hello, I wanted find a way to honor her memory and feel her with me in some way.

I wore jewelry she had given me over the years: a ring that my father had given her that I’ve been wearing since high school and some earrings that I bought with one of her birthday checks a few years ago.

And I made “The Kugel.” My mother’s noodle kugel made its appearance at every festive meal except Passover (no noodles on Passover.) We enjoyed its buttery cinnamon sugar goodness  on holidays, Jewish or non.

I started making it almost ten years ago as an addition to our holiday menu. She sent me the recipe. It made my exotic life feel more like home. I don’t prepare it for every holiday. This year I did.

It came out perfect and tasted delicious.

As people passed through the improvised buffet line I heard them ask, “What is it?” With each explanation that “Kugel means casserole in Yiddish and it was my mother’s recipe,” I felt a  connection.

Not enough to completely replace my mother’s presence at the table at which she would not usually sit. But certainly sufficient to brighten her memory and let her distant presence  energize its sparkle in my life and enrich our celebration and appreciation.

Thank you, Mom. Very much.

Target brings a miracle of Chanukah to Kapolei

20 Nov 2010 2 Comments

by Being Jewish in Hawaii in Holiday Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have been holding off on writing my annual diatribe against all of the retail establishments who have had their Christmas merchandise on display  since before Halloween. I am amazed (appalled)  at how the Fall season has some how tragically become an almost three-month countdown to the biggest money-making event capitalists could possibly conceive: Christmas.

I even thought of adding a new category to this blog entitled “Kvetching” and lead off with my favorite seasonal complaint mentioned in the previous paragraph. But stuff just kept getting in the way.

I’ve been busy with my family and Rotary and my new job. I haven’t been shopping a whole lot. And I did not want to make that particular complaint a signature issue of a blog that I’ve created to explore how my unique experiences connect with the larger community on the island, on the mainland, across other oceans and definitely other religions.

I still like the idea of creating a category called “Kvetching.” Everybody needs the chance to whine and complain now and then.

Today I am not going to complain. Just the opposite. I am going to kvell (Maybe that should be a category as well. Maybe I should rename all of my categories with Yiddish titles.)

Something great happened yesterday and I am of the sneaking suspicion that it is my own very personal reward for exercising a bit of self-restraint. I have not complained too much about the fact that Christmas trees that have been subtly emerging over the past month or the “Holiday” decorations and events that are named with such political correctness, but adorned with absolutely no diversity whatsoever.

I have simply rushed passed them and when my children were in tow, murmured minimal mumblings about the silliness of it all. I have not gotten worked up at all.

Until yesterday. We stopped by Target on our way to the IPA Scholastic Book Fair to get some supplies for the Ko Olina Resort & Marina Thanksgiving Outreach we are participating in today. The Rotary Club of Kapolei will be serving 200 meals at the US Vets facility at Kalaeloa.

That’s when it happened. We were in the greeting card section when my younger girl joyfully exclaimed, “Chanukah decorations!”

I turned to look at what she was talking about and I saw it too, with my very own eyes, Chanukah decorations. It was not just one or two items shoved on a bottom shelf as a token nod to people who might be in search of something else in life besides Christmas. No, it was an entire section that was strategically placed at the end of the aisle to attract our attention and encourage us to buy, buy buy. And I did. There were plates, napkins, menorahs, dreidles, decorations and candles.

I was thrilled and my daughter was too.

When I first moved to Hawaii my mother had to send me stuff from her Temple gift shop in Kansas City. She’d send me Chanukah gelt and small dreidles to take to the kids’ classrooms. She sent  plates and napkins so we could have holiday appropriate celebrations in our home.

Whenever there was a Jewish holiday, Kapolei Safeway would display the matzah and chicken soup boxes as if that’s what we eat on a ritual basis.

Over the years I have been able to purchase what I need at our own Temple gift shop and have done a lot of online shopping as well. I always support the Innisbrook gift wrap fundraiser at IPA because they have Chanukah wrapping paper and gift bags.

Yesterday I supported Target. We bought plates, napkins, decorations and even some candles that we don’t need. If they are going to give us a whole section, I am going to shop there–whole heartedly.

My husband described it in  capitalist terms, if I show a demand they will offer the supply!

I don’t know how long those items were there. Perhaps they went up in October as well. But since the first night of Chanukah is on December 1 this year, I saw last night as excellent timing. A few weeks before the holiday, right around Thanksgiving is the perfect time to get “In the spirit.”

It’s like our own little Chanukah miracle, right in the middle of the Kapolei Target, offering a spirit of good will for the season. This  will certainly buoy me down the aisles of that store and others with a much smaller kvetch on my tongue and a good dose of holiday cheer in my heart.

Doing the Bat Mitzvah shuttle

14 Nov 2010 2 Comments

by Being Jewish in Hawaii in In the car, Rites of Passage, Traditions, Travel Tags: , , ,

We just came home from a Bat Mitzvah.

I had three kids in the car. They make up the 8th grade class at Honolulu Temple Emanu-El’s SJS, besides the Bat Mitzvah girl. She had her own transportation.

I will take them to her party this evening.

There are only 4 kids in the class. My older daughter is one of them. Her Bat Mitzvah last January was the first for that class. A Bar Mitzvah followed last summer. The Bat Mitzvah today and a Bar Mitzvah scheduled later this month over  Thanksgiving weekend will find the whole class completed in this major rite of passage. Two boys and two girls.

While a small group like this does not offer the busy social life of many Jewish 13-year-olds, filled with ceremonies and catered affairs on a weekly basis, it does offer the opportunity to forge close relationships between these adolescents who have been in Sunday school class together every week from 9 am to noon since they were in kindergarten.

Add in Wednesday afternoons for two hours of Hebrew school since fourth grade and these kids have spent a significant amount of time together learning about and being Jewish.

As I drove, my daughter talked and joked and laughed with these two boys, who are like brothers to her. I started to muse about her prospects of dating a Jewish boy or marrying one some day. I wondered which of the two boys sitting in the backseat of my car would make a good boyfriend or husband. I like them both very much.

They are very nice boys. I am friends with their mothers. And that’s when I stopped. I don’t want to be in-laws with my friends. She can meet a Jewish boy from another state when she is in college. Or maybe one will move here that she doesn’t know so well.

It did remind me of my youth and the Jewish boys I knew so well: Jon Sherman and Jason Oxman. We lived in the same neighborhood. We rode together and were in the same class at Sunday school, Hebrew school, weekend camp programs for our entire Jewish educations. Jon and I were in the same class in elementary school every year as well. We all went to the same high school. They were like my brothers. We fought like siblings and have remained in contact to this day.

I never would have dated either of them and I am pretty sure they would say the same about me.

So that’s where it stops.

I will let my daughter play football with these nice Jewish boys we know so well. They can go to parties and dance and lead services together with the Temple youth group. And I will let her choose her own dates as well. I’m pretty sure these boys will have her back and take good care of her like any brother would.

Drive nicely, or GET OFF THE ROAD

11 Nov 2010 Leave a comment

by Being Jewish in Hawaii in Family, General, Relationships, Travel Tags: , , , ,

I used to be a good driver. At least that’s what I thought.

Other than  a minor fender bender in the middle of rush hour traffic in West L.A. when I was in college a very long time ago that was never even determined to be my fault, I have suffered no major car accidents

The only speeding ticket I ever got was in the spring of 1991 when I was driving the almost 200 miles from Kansas City to Omaha for my Uncle Buddy’s birthday party.

I had never driven that far by myself, but my mother did not want me to miss the party and my work schedule was not conducive to me riding with her or my sister. So I chugged my little rented Geo Tracker (remember those) along the highway as fast I as I possibly could so that I would arrive in time.  That’s when I got pulled over.

I still made it to the party and my family’s side with moments to spare and my mother, in a gracious gesture of understanding, paid the fine. It was altogether a very long time ago.

I do not think that either of these incidents even remotely suggests that I am in any way a bad driver.

It was not until I married my second husband that I got the slightest inkling that I might not be up to standard, in the driving department. According to him, I might even be considered a traffic hazard. But certainly not for going too fast. Speedy Gonzales is not my MO.

He never commented on my skills. I don’t even think he realized this particular shortcoming. It was I who brought it to his attention.

When we got  hitched a few years ago, my husband was an Assistant Professor of Military Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He commuted from Kapolei to UH each day which meant he was often stuck in traffic. Yes, Hawaii has traffic, in abundance.

This gave him plenty of time to reflect on the deficient skills of the drivers around him who created much of the congestion that was so understandably annoying.

The drive home was the worst. What should normally take about 30 minutes to drive the 23 miles between our house and the university could easily suck up 90 to 120 minutes of his afternoon. That’s how bad the traffic can get. It totally sucks. Thank goodness he doesn’t have to do it anymore. Now he works  in another direction and comes and goes in about 20 minutes. He is a much happier man.

I noticed that the frustration induced by the demanding commute translated into him becoming a slightly more aggressive driver.

One of the things that I liked about him when we were dating was that I felt safe in his car when we were on the road. He never seemed to be in too much of a hurry. He did not tailgate. He kept two hands on the wheel (most of the time) and his eyes on the road. I’d had a few scary incidents in my past and it was comforting to be in a man’s car with whom I felt safe.

I still feel safe in his car. I simply saw a shift in his driving habits when he worked at UH. Mostly he drove faster and was more likely to change lanes to get around somebody who was traveling too slowly.

Over dinner is when I heard his complaints. From his perspective, a majority of Oahu’s drivers  do not understand what is considered common rules of the road, especially when they are  on the freeway. Due to their lack of consideration for the flow of traffic, they create more congestion than necessary.

As he delineated the details of their violations, his description of how each lane should be traveling faster than the one to the right of it, allowing for lane changes as drivers accelerate or exit, his complaints about people who brake in the middle of traffic for no discernible reason or to look at something happening on the side of the road and the subsequent chain reaction this braking causes for miles behind, hit home.

“That’s me,” I thought–except the “Lookie Loo” part. I do not slow down to look at other people’s problems on the side of the road. I have always thought it was an invasion of their privacy at what is usually a very stressful time.

What I had perceived as protecting the safety of me and my children, my cautious, defensive driving was actually causing problems for others and creating minor hazards on the road. HELLO!

With my new-found  understanding of the rules of the road, I changed several of my habits with great success and little compromise.

Turns out I get places faster these days as I move with the flow of traffic. I still boast a clean driving record. I can also add to that list  that, even though I know he was not directing his criticism at me, I am completely confident that if my husband and I were to meet on the road, he would feel no nagging annoyance at my ignorant driving habits. Instead, I would garner his admiration and appreciation anywhere we go.