Senior Moments: The night my mother forgot Hanukkah

On the night that Mom forgot Hanukkah, she left a message on my voicemail in a halting tone. It said simply, “For some reason I can’t remember the story of Hanukkah.”

At 99, my mother’s always good memory had started to slip. She wanted to know if I could write down the story and bring it to her.

Granted, it can be a convoluted story, so I boiled it down to the nugget. Bad guys desecrated the Temple. Good guys drove them out and discovered that the sacred lamp oil had been destroyed, except for one night’s supply. But miraculously, that oil lasted for eight nights. So, now we light candles for eight nights of Hanukkah to commemorate the miracle.

“That sounds about right,” Mom laughed.

With the story out of the way, I wanted to know what she remembered about the holiday when she was gro