Dreidle

STILL VULNERABLE 

 March 12, 2012

- Joy Krauthammer

Looking for a small travel alarm clock, I decided to check my husband's, z'l, top dresser drawer where he kept all his miscellaneous items, i.e. coins, paper bills, pens, pen knife, business cards, beeper, keys, locks, name tag, buttons, giant paper clip, tape, screwdrivers, gum, golf things, strange toys, small metal balls, etc. (The Rebbe's dollar bill had been in the drawer in years past.) Those things remain there as I have not bothered with deleting them.  It was too hard seeing them six years ago. Clothes I gave away from all the neat stacks in the tall men's dresser that I had purchased in 1977; the finest well crafted lovely wood modern dresser. I really appreciated it's smooth styling.

Today I thought to myself, yes! -- I am proud of myself that I can rummage through his large top drawer six years later, through dozens of pens, makers, baby flashlights and personal small items, looking for what I want, and not get upset.  

Then it hit me--boom; I saw the little plastic red DREIDLE. Yup, it got my guard down, and there was the love, humanity and history in it all. Chanukah was important to us from the beginning, and this thumb sized symbol reminded me in a flash of the decades we had lighting chanukiyot and with our daughter, playing dreidle with pennies on the holiday. That little Jewish spinning toy has a lot of power.
And I thought I was finally through to the light at the end of 'the tunnel'.

photo © Joy Krauthammer
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