Tonight, We Celebrate Hanukkah

Forget latkes.

We're frying catfish.

Good Ole Boys can light the menorah, too, you know.

For us, of course, it's just a little celebration we do, nothing big. No presents, those come with Christmas. Usually, we focus on the theme of being willing to fight for religious freedom. This year, not surprisingly, we'll focus on the theme of miracles.

The whole idea of miracles is an interesting one. It seems fairly innocuous, but it's a great way to start a fight. Everyone has a different definition of "miracle."

I'll admit to plastering on a fake smile, myself, when certain people have attributed Little Warrior's remission to "miracle." What, the amazing doctors were just along as witnesses?

But neither can I side with the black-and-white folks who assert that birth is not a miracle, it is a biological process; love is not a miracle, it is a way of keeping the species alive and functioning.

In the end, gratefulness wins out. We are blessed enough to live in a country with excellent medical care, to have insurance so we have access to that care, to wind up at the same hospital with a gifted surgeon who was willing to go into the emotional world of pediatric surgery, to be living in a city with good doctors and not out in the sticks, to have a baby whose body did not react poorly to treatment, and for her cancer to have been caught early in the process.

Oil that lasts 8 days. The above events.

I'll call them both milagro.