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David let himself into the house after work one frigid December Thursday, a day that seemed pretty random and uneventful. It was about two weeks before Christmas, and the house was decorated tastefully with wreaths and a few strategically placed twigs of mistletoe that David took a lot of pleasure in maneuvering them under. They’d be going to the tree farm on Sunday; Patrick wanted to make a family outing out of it, and as much as David grumbled about the idea of trying to pretend that freezing to death in a forest was a fun activity, there was a frisson of warmth that ran through him when he thought about them the way that Patrick did- they were a family. Only for three and a bit months so far, but still.
But anyway, it wasn’t Christmas yet, and this had seemed like a pretty normal Thursday to him but now as he walked through the door there was some kind of… music playing? Very cloying, kindergarten-kid music that seemed to ring a faint bell. His forehead wrinkling, he walked in a bit further, hanging his coat on the hook in the mudroom and taking off his boots to replace them with his house slippers. So… Patrick was playing weird music. Fine. Probably nothing.
Then the song changed to one that David recognized quite well, and as his eyes widened he heard a shouted “fuck!” and a horrifying sizzling sound coming from the kitchen. David dropped his bags on the floor and ran to the kitchen to the saccharine soundtrack of someone’s preschool teacher singing about a dreidel made of clay.
Patrick was in the kitchen, which was about ten degrees hotter than the entryway had been, and the sight was kind of frightening. A soup pot and large skillet were both filled with oil which was sputtering and bubbling all over the cabinets and the countertops, and there was an odd burning smell coming from the stove area. There was a bowl on the counter filled with something sludgy that was a weird shade of beige and another bowl covered in a towel that looked like it was overflowing with dough. A fine silt of flour covered most of the kitchen surfaces, and a pile of potato peelings sat, growing brownish-red, abandoned on the counter. Patrick’s face was reddened and covered in sweat, and whether it was from the heat, the effort, or immense frustration David couldn’t tell at all; he had three band aids wrapped around different fingers and was cursing fluently under his breath as he stared at the carnage in front of him.
David stared for a second before asking, “honey, what the fuck is going on?” Then he felt like an asshole because he was like 99% sure he knew, and it was really sweet, but also those oil stains weren’t coming out of the farmhouse wood cabinets very easily.
“David,” Patrick said exhaustedly, “why the hell is your holiday full of fucking deep frying? Doesn’t God know that I hate deep frying?”
“Well maybe Jesus knows, and this just isn’t his scene,” David replied before he could stop himself. “What are you even doing, though?”
Patrick groaned and, ducking his head, made his way over to the stove, where he turned off the flames under the pot and pan. After a few seconds, the oil stopped sputtering over the edges and Patrick sighed in relief. “I wanted to make you Hanukkah,” he said, leaning his head in his hands, his elbows on the counter. “I just didn’t realize it would be so hard. ”
“I can see that,” David said, smiling as he ran his fingers over Patrick’s bandaged hands. “I didn’t expect so many sexy battlefield wounds from it, though.”
“Hand graters are a menace , David,” Patrick muttered through gritted teeth.
David’s eyebrows shot up, because, hand graters? Did they own a hand grater, besides the one they used for cheese? Was Patrick defiling their cheese grater with potatoes? “Um, we own a food processor. Why the hell were you using a hand grater?”
Patrick sprang up, wild-eyed. “Because the recipe said that I should! That the blog lady’s grandmother used to lovingly grate the potatoes and onions by hand and you could taste the difference!”
“Oh, honey… no.” David almost wanted to laugh at the frazzled image of his husband in front of him, but couldn’t quite bring himself to. “Food bloggers just want to make you feel inferior, you know that.”
With a groan, Patrick sat down in a kitchen chair; David sat down opposite him at the table. Patrick looked wrecked, but not in a fun way- he looked kind of miserable, actually, and David itched with the desire to figure out why and make it stop.
“So... “ he said, tentatively, reaching his hand over the table; Patrick grabbed hold of it and held it between both his own, and David could feel the band aids rubbing against his fingers and palms. “So you look kind of upset. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’m not upset, I’m just frustrated,” Patrick muttered in a huff. “I can’t fucking do any of this. How do I do this, David? What am I doing wrong? I just wanted to give you Hanukkah.”
David’s heart gave a pang at this, even as he laughed, because seriously? “Patrick,” he said, giggling, “we’ve been together for two and a half years. You know I can’t cook. Why do you think I have the foggiest clue how to make… latkes, probably, and… what’s the stuff in the bowl?”
“Jelly doughnuts- I wasn’t sure how to pronounce the name from the recipe- but they’re both a disaster and I hate frying and I hate making yeast dough and grating fucking onions and I figured you’d know how to do this stuff from when you were a kid or whatever, because we have this whole fancy Christmas planned and you went with me to my parents for Thanksgiving and your family isn’t here and I wanted to give you something that was yours.”
For about a second after hearing this David wanted to kiss Patrick, a feeling that was then utterly superseded by a need to hug him. So he stood up and opened his arms and said “come here” and Patrick fell against David’s chest, his face buried in David’s sweater. David pecked kisses into Patrick’s hair. “This definitely falls in the top ten sweetest things you have ever done for me, and you proposed marriage to me so that should tell you something,” David murmured into Patrick’s ear.
Patrick laughed weakly. “I know I’m overreacting, but it’s just… you know…”
David knew that the correct fill-in-the-blank here was at least partly “you don’t like being bad at things,” but didn’t think that was necessarily the constructive answer here. “I know, you’re just trying to be wonderful and I’m sorry it’s not working. But Patrick… literally nobody has ever done this for me in my life. Ever. So I have no idea how this is meant to be done correctly, at all, and just the mere fact of you having tried-”
“Wait,” Patrick said with a confused expression, “really, you haven’t had this stuff before? Latkes and… whatever the jelly doughnuts were called?”
“Sufganiyot, and, like, yeah, of course I’ve had them. They gave out sufganiyot at Hebrew school at the Hanukkah party, and then at NYU freshman year I went to this party run by some rabbi with this massive beard and one of those fedora hats and they had these fresh latkes that you could get right out of the frying pan that were to die for, including these interesting ones that were sweet potato with some kind of chutney on them, and then in Israel on Birthright I was there in November and all the bakeries had these tables outside for like a month before Hanukkah even started with sufganiyot filled with jelly and caramel and custard and chocolate, and then when I lived in Williamsburg I used to go to the chassidic bakeries to buy them and some of them were amazing and some of them were kind of mediocre, and it’s weird because you wouldn’t think that you could have a mediocre jelly doughnut, though I think part of it had to do with whether they were fresh, and-”
After patiently listening to David reminisce about Fried Foods I Have Eaten for far longer than anyone who wasn’t bound by marriage vows ever would, Patrick cut him off. “But, like, that was all other places- not with your family?”
“Patrick,” David said, rolling his eyes, “when your most flamboyant, extravagant, party-planning parent is the Christian one, and the Jewish parent is completely incapable of making a sandwich, you don’t really learn how to make traditional Hanukkah cuisine. I mean, I wouldn’t swear to my mom being able to make a sandwich either, but you get what I mean.”
“I do,” Patrick replied, smiling softly.
“Anyway, we got eight nights of presents because, like, eight nights of presents! But the holiday season was mostly Christmas and mostly Mom until even my dad started to associate ‘December’ with ‘holiday season’ with ‘Christmas season.’ And he’d just light his menorah in the corner at the Christmas party, and he made me go to Hebrew school until my mom switched me to Thursday night tap classes instead, and I had a bar mitzvah party and all that, but all the Jewishy stuff was never really something we did as a family, you know?”
Patrick frowned. “I mean, I guess? I just can’t picture that at all.”
Of course Patrick couldn’t picture it- he had sprung fully formed from a Norman Rockwell painting. David cast his mind back to Thanksgiving with the Brewers only a month after their wedding; folksy placemats and placecards, warm smiles, a steaming turkey with white meat that was just a little too dry, people saying what they were thankful for and meaning it- and David had found being thankful remarkably easy, sitting there with Patrick and his family around him, welcoming him as one of their own. He couldn’t even imagine what a Brewer Christmas must be like.
“The thing is,” David said reluctantly, “even the Christmassy stuff- half of it was a show. Like, sure, half of it was Adelina making gingerbread men and snow angels with me and Alexis, and us unwrapping presents under the tree, and that was- nice, but…. The other half was my mom hiring decorators and being drugged through the whole thing, my dad using the party as a meet and greet for bigwigs, and the two of us just being dressed up in kiddie couture, shown off to the right people as… accessories for my parents, I guess, and then whisked off to bed. Then came the Number, when I got old enough, and the less said about that the better. And those times I didn’t do it to make my mom feel better, I did it because she threatened to cut my allowance otherwise.”
Patrick nodded understandingly. “A dire threat for a teenager, yeah.”
“I was twenty-seven, but sure.” There was a reason David didn’t bring this kind of stuff up too frequently, now that he had signed a mortgage and had a budgeting spreadsheet. It was embarrassing. “But what I’m saying is- that Christmas you saw from us, the party at the motel, a lot of that was basically my dad trying to pretend that the family parties back then were anything other than soulless entertainment for odious B-listers and moguls. And… it worked, because we’re different now than we were then. We saw he was trying, and that he probably had been trying then too, he just didn’t know how. But… yeah. It’s complicated.”
“So you didn’t really have a family Christmas til you got here,” Patrick said softly, disbelievingly. He picked up David’s hand in one of his own and squeezed gently.
David shook his head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying! I mean, yes,” he admitted, “that’s mostly accurate, though like I said, we had some of that kind of stuff, even back then. I always basically liked Christmas with my family, except the bad parts. What I mean to say is- I never had a family Hanukkah. Ever.”
David’s hand was being squeezed even harder now, and he looked down at the table as he tried to assemble his scrambled feelings into a straight line, into something that made sense. “I’m sorry for assuming,” Patrick whispered from across the table.
David bolted upright and stared at Patrick, who was looking contrite , and no no no that wasn’t the point here. “Oh god, no, sweetheart- no, it’s just--” David paused for a minute so that he wouldn’t start choking up, because that would only make Patrick even more upset with himself, and that would be even worse- “my husband isn’t even Jewish and he made me the first family Hanukkah I have ever had, because he wanted me to have it. I do not care if the latkes are burnt or the doughnuts are soggy or- no, I do care if our home goes up in a grease fire, I care very much about that. But the rest of it- you researched how to do a holiday that isn’t even yours just for me. And that already- I don’t have words for how that feels for me.”
Looking across the room at Patrick, David could see that his eyes were tearing up. He did that little nod and twitch of his shoulders that said come here in their personal language, and Patrick did, getting up from his chair and moving over to sit in David’s lap, legs splayed over David’s. He kissed David on the lips, short but firm, then buried his face in the space between David’s neck and shoulder, and David could feel the little puffs of Patrick’s breath there, starting off faster and easing gentler. He could feel Patrick’s arms stroking his shoulder and back, he could feel the rise and fall of Patrick’s chest on his own.
“You don’t have to live up to any family Hanukkah memories,” David said quietly, right into Patrick’s ear. “I don’t have them. We’re making them now, for our family.”
He suddenly heard a sniffle from his shoulder area, and had to smile. Patrick, it seemed, had to smile too; as he lifted his head up, tears tracked down his cheeks even as he grinned. “I don’t know why I’m melting down over you talking about your Hanukkah-deprived childhood,” Patrick said, slightly abashed, but with a twinkle in his eye that said that he knew that David knew exactly why it was.
David cleared his own throat, because he was realizing that they had come perilously close to a two person meltdown right there. “Beats me,” he said, teasing, “but I’m wondering, what exactly were you envisioning when you were trying to recreate my perfect theoretical family Hanukkah? I find it hard to believe that it just ended with the food.”
“Oh!” Patrick’s eyes widened and he jumped off David’s lap. “Okay. Now, you have to promise not to get mad, because I kind of started prepping before I’d completely purchased everything, and apparently the Jewish population of the Greater Elms is not large and as a result the local supply of Hanukkah decorations is not necessarily up to your aesthetic standard?”
“All Hanukkah decorations are basically blue-and-silver versions of all the most obnoxious Christmas-tinselly garbage, yes.”
“And I got a few nice things online but only one or two came in on time, so-” David could see Patrick’s anxiety clearly written on his face. “I kind of thought I’d play off some childhood nostalgia? But you don’t- you don’t have that, so I don’t know what I just did, and-”
David rolled his eyes, smiling wider than he knew possible. “You know what, let me at least see it so I know what kind of bad taste I’m divorcing you for, okay?” He grabbed Patrick, still stammering, by the hand and switched on the light in the living room as they entered. He froze. “Um, wow.”
All of the Christmas decorations were gone- every wreath, mistletoe branch, red-and-gold peppermint-scented votive candle… Instead the walls were festooned in the dreaded blue-and-silver tinsel, with a shiny cardboard “HAPPY HANUKKAH” sign hanging over the fireplace (from which the handmade felt stockings were now absent). Neon plastic dreidels were scattered on the surfaces, and there was a rustic-looking wooden plaque- probably one of Patrick’s “nice things he’d ordered online”- that said “I love you a latke” on it. It all was-
“I wanted this to be just for you, so I made a placement chart of where all the Christmas decorations were and I’ll hang them back up after Hanukkah exactly where you put them. It’s numbered and everything. I just wanted- god, but it looks so stupid now-”
Patrick’s head was in his hands, and David could still hear the tinny preschool Hanukkah music in the background, and his heart actually ached. “This is the most beautifully ugly thing I have ever seen,” he said, tremblingly, drawing Patrick in next to him. “I absolutely love it.”
In his arms, David could feel Patrick letting a deep breath out. “Good,” he said, “good good good, because there’s still one thing more.” And Patrick slipped out from David’s arms and ducked over to a cardboard box on the side of the room, from which he carefully took out a menorah. It was silver, eight curved branches surrounding a middle straight one, all with faint silver etchings, and it was- acceptable without being the kind of thing that Patrick would have picked out for him. Patrick would have gotten him something off Etsy, minimalist and modern and probably black, because he’d be too scared of getting it wrong. This had been bought by someone who picked the first thing off the shelf at the Judaica store without thinking about aesthetics at all.
“It’s from your dad,” Patrick said softly, and David started, because of course his dad would buy this, and he hated the way that he could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. “He called the store once when you were out picking up lunch, and I mentioned this to him and he told me he’d send it. He said he was going to call you, he was so excited to hear about our first family Hanukkah.”
And damn, now the tears were rolling down his cheeks as he watched Patrick carefully put a fireproof tray on the big bay window, cleared of its cushion, and rested the menorah on it gently. As Patrick reached for a lighter and a box of long, white taper candles, David made his way over to the window, blinking back the wetness in his eyes. “This bit I do know, I think,” he said, hesitantly. “This bit my dad used to do every year, in the corner somewhere.”
He knelt and began to place candles one at a time in each branch, carefully making sure they were secure and standing tall. He could hear Patrick shifting behind him. “Um,” Patrick said awkwardly, “this website says it’s- it’s the first night? And you put one candle in. And then two on the second night.”
David stopped where he was putting the sixth candle in, picturing Patrick reading websites to make sure he understood Hanukkah correctly. Should David be doing that too? Starting from scratch and doing it right? He shook his head, firmly. “My dad did it this way,” he said. “He just lit them all in one go.”
“All right, David,” Patrick murmured from behind him.
Once all nine candles were in, eight on the curving branches and one tall in the center, David heaved a breath and stood up. Patrick was at his side with the lighter, handing it to him gingerly as David took the candle from the middle branch. David vaguely remembered, as he lit the candle, that the rabbi from the NYU Hanukkah party had said some blessing before he lit the menorah, and he was sure that Patrick was itching to tell him about that but restraining himself. Instead, he took a deep breath and moved his candle to light the others, from left to right, slowly, his hand shaking only a little. When all eight flames were lit, he delicately placed the candle back in the center of the menorah, wincing a little at the combined heat of the flames around him.
When he stood back, looking at the menorah reflecting off the night-black windowpanes, he felt Patrick move next to him and put an arm around his waist. “I’ve never seen one of these before in real life. It’s beautiful,” he said quietly, almost reverently. David put his arm around Patrick’s shoulder and tried not to think too hard about all of leaps into the unknown that Patrick had made for him all these years, because he didn’t want to cry again.
“Yes you have,” David said, “my dad had one lit at that first Christmas party. He just- it just wasn’t really the focus.”
He pulled Patrick even closer as he looked around the room at the kitschy tinsel decorations that had been all that Patrick could find for him, as he listened to someone’s Hebrew school teacher singing tinnily to the sound of a jangly guitar about oil that lasted for eight days, as he still smelled the lingering scent of scorched oil. “I think tomorrow I should start putting some of that Christmas stuff back up,” he said. “Our home should have stuff for both of us up, and frankly, not your fault at all but these decorations just aren’t really carrying the room.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Patrick said into David’s shoulder. “But today it’s just Hanukkah.”
“Alright,” David responded, smiling. He fully intended to soak in this moment in front of the candles a little longer, but then his stomach suddenly growled. Patrick snickered, and David rolled his eyes. “Okay, I think it’s time to revisit those latkes. Or order a pizza, but honestly I think we can hack it. Latkes are basically just hash browns, if you think about it.”
“If you’re prepared to help, then sure,” Patrick agreed, eyebrow raised.
David glared. “For fried potatoes I can do many things,” he said reproachfully. “And,” he added, softly, “I can do anything if I’m doing it with you.”
The look that Patrick gave him in response only made David even more sure it was true.
“Now,” David said, curling himself even tighter around Patrick as he turned them around to walk to the kitchen, “let’s go have ourselves a family Hanukkah, and don't think I've forgotten about the eight days of presents part.”