In the Words of My Holy Sister, "The Spirit of Chanukah Continues On!". And So Will I.

Bsd
Chanuka is over. But I wanted to post this special story. And it's still relevant. So, enjoy, y'all!


Lights twinkled from the menorahs on the table, people conversed in corners, and kids ran around madly. It was a classic Chabad House Chanukah party, circa 1986. My mother stood by the door, carefully watching to make sure none of her kids ran outside. They had only moved to Berkeley two weeks before, and were staying in the Chabad House while they looked for an apartment. After living in Crown Heights for the past four years or so, being back in the Bay Area near her dad was great. My father had gotten a job managing the Chabad House he had been BT with, and here they were, celebrating their first Chanukah as a family in Berkeley.
In the back of the Chabad House, where the kids were playing, my one and a half year old sister was admiring the bright lights of a menorah that had been placed in a window. A window with a very low ledge. My sister reached out and plucked one of the pretty candles out of the menorah. Wax dripped from the candle onto her little hand, and she dropped it! It fell and lit her pretty polyester dress on fire.
Polyester burns fast. Really, really fast. My sister was aflame before anyone knew.
My brother Levi, who was three at the time, ran out to my parents, screaming, "Nechama's on fire! Nechama's on fire!"
My parents raced back to the room where she was. Some quick thinking person called 911 and 770. My father grabbed her and dumped her in the sink, thrusting her under the faucet and turning on the water, extinguishing the flames under the running water.
They rushed her to the hospital. She had three degree burns all across her chest and face.
The first miracle was that the doctors let my parents take her home. She had to be brought into the hospital every day in order to have her bandages changed, but she was home.
Thank G-d, the scars on her face faded almost immediately. But the damage to her chest was much deeper, and they scheduled surgery for two weeks after the fire. They were going to take tissue from her legs and graft it to her chest. Major surgery is always dangerous, but especially for toddlers. There is always the threat of them going under the anesthia and not waking up.
My parents wrote and called into the Rebbe for a bracha, of course, and took her to the surgery.
The surgeon came into the pre-op room to examine my sister for the surgery scheduled for later that day.
Result?
She doesn't need it.
That was miracle number two.
It took three months or so for my sister to be fully recovered. Today, no one would ever be able to tell she'd ever had such a thing happen to her, unless you look closely at her left earlobe. There is still a little scar there.
That was our family Chanukah miracle.
And that, about 21 years or so later, my sister went out with her husband for the first time on the seventh night of Chanukah... but maybe I'll save that (and the song we made up in the dorm about it) for next year...
Happy Chanukah!