For Rosh Hashana, my mother took me and my father to her sister. We had a celebratory dinner with a honey cake for desert to make the upcoming year sweet, and my uncle spoke against God and religion, a habit he developed for holiday dinners. The three of us stayed there for two days. I called the neighborhood kids to join me in my circus training, while my parents had grapes or cake on the verandah with relatives.
In Yom Kippur, we stayed home, because none of us fasted, and we didn’t need a “before and after feast”. I started fasting. But my aunt lived two hours away from us, and the travel was still too long to be taken for one stubborn child. Nobody fasted at my mother’s sister’s anyway, because if they did, my uncle would never cease to speak against it. My cousins only fasted when they hated a meal. My mother baked a chocolate cake for my fasting-break, and bought my favorite ravioli can. My father lit a candle in memory of dead souls, mostly family.
For Hanukah, when my birthday did not overlap with the holiday, my mother sent me to her sister for the week of school vacation. If it did coincide, my mother baked a creamy chocolate cake, and my father placed the right number of candles on the cake: my age plus one, though we believed I’d be there for the next birthday celebration. It’s a Jewish thing: having another candle, just in case. My mother sent me to her sister’s for the rest of the vacation, so I could play with the dog and the three generations of cats in the garden.
For Purim, we did not go to my mother’s sister, because Purim was just for kids, and nobody had a feast. My mother created a costume of a butterfly by tying wings to my shoulders. My body in tights and sweater looked like a shabby cocoon. Another year, she and my aunt made me a snow queen costume with red satin and lots of cotton wool. A photographer took my picture in the kindergarten, where the holiday was appropriately celebrated among children, with the exception of a collective dance for the parents.
For Pesach, the three of us went to my mother’s sister for a big feast, to be celebrated around a large table. My aunt prepared lots of food without wheat flour, and my cousins threw matzo pieces across the table, when the adults didn’t notice. My uncle spoke against God and religion. My mother sat erectly, elegant and reticent. My father helped me climb up on my chair to sing the questions of “Ma Nishtana” despite my uncle’s sour face. I stayed at my aunt’s for the rest of the three-week school vacation, and my cousins treated me to ice cream.
For Shavuot, the last holiday before summer, my mother made a cheesecake I couldn’t stop eating, so good it was. My father made me a crown from asparagus branches and flowers from the garden for the kindergarten’s commemoration. The vacation was of mere three days, so I didn’t go to my aunt’s. I played on the street with the other kids, and felt sorry to be back to school so quickly afterwards. When summer vacation would finally arrive, my mother would send me to her sister for as long as I wanted and my aunt allowed. Soon after, it would be Rosh Hashana again.
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Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of the flash collection “Life In, Life Out”, published by Matter Press and the flash and story collection “Light Reflection Over Blues”, published by Ravenna Press. http://ravennapress.com/books/light-reflection-over-blues/ Her work has appeared in The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Ambit (UK), The Literary Review, CALYX Journal, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Prism International, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Other stories have been featured in anthologies such as W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International, Sonder Press’s Best Small Fictions 2020, Politically Inspired Fiction, and The Best of Gigantic. Her flashes have been twice listed in Best of the WEB, Wigleaf. She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and first placed in The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest. Her story collections were finalists for Iowa Fiction award. She grew up in Israel, and lives in Brazil. She holds a PhD in English Literature with a focus on women authors, gender, minorities and trauma studies.
