12/12/20 Usually Chanukah is all about get togethers with friends at our house or their houses. Big annual parties, community celebrations. Shipment of presents — two kids x eight days each — that my mom brings along when they visit for Thanksgiving and leaves with us, squirreled away in a closet, until the appropriate moment. Chanukah is not a big holiday, despite the bullshit attempts at parallels In media and popular culture, and I never really have shopped for the kids. Just let my mom do one token gift a night, more or less, and that’s it. This year, of course, we’re doing it differently. No community gatherings at all. No latke and dessert gatherings at friends’ houses to light the candles, and no one at ours. No parties. But we did make a ton of latkes last weekend and have been eating them all week, accompanied by the usual disagreements: Applesauce AND sour cream? Just applesauce? Sour cream only? Or, the genuinely contentious question: salt or sugar? (My family has a salt wing and a sugar wing, so I can appreciate both, but would say I’m planted squarely in the sugar wing!) Presents situation was different too. Without my mom’s careful planning, preparation, wrapping, and delivery, I had to pull something together myself. I’ve spoken with friends and other parts of the country in the past few weeks who won’t set foot in any stores unless absolutely necessary, but I’ve been to Marshall’s a bunch of times. One hour at Marshall’s, $200 later, and I had enough silly little gifts (and wrapping paper) to make it through the holiday: Kids robes, superhero slippers, toy dinosaurs, a set with a ton of tiny nail polish colors, etc. We’re managing this one just fine. And I’m still ready for more latkes.
December 13, 2020
France has started a 9pm-6am curfew. I don't feel as if it will affect me at all since I'm never out and about then, but in a few weeks when I start teaching my evening class I suppose it could be an issue. I wonder how much of an effect it will have. I still feel pessimistic about what's happening on the university campus but there is absolutely no discussion about moving to online. I don't know how much students will be controlled in their apartments as far as social gatherings go, especially since we're outside of Paris proper...so I'm skeptical that we'll see numbers going down drastically as a result of these new measures. Every week I feel like I go into a battle zone to get my teaching over and done with. Thank goodness there's a week of break after this one.
November 9, 2020