Happy Chanukah!

It's the last night of Chanukah tonight, and I'm going to be spending it with one of my best friends from childhood. It's kind of a crazy story, actually.

Becky and I went to kindergarten and elementary school together, but I transferred to a different school in fifth grade. We kept in touch sporadically after that, even attending the same Hebrew school for a little while, but we pretty much lost track of each other sometime around the middle of high school. Then I went to college and graduate school, got married, moved to Philadelphia, and joined the congregation at Kol Tzedek, a Reconstructionist community based in West Philadelphia.

Then one day, two years ago, I was sitting in Shabbat morning services at KT and looked up to see a somewhat familiar face across the room from me. At first I ignored her --- I'm really terrible with putting names together with faces, and it was far more logical to assume that she was just a congregant who looked somewhat familiar because I'd met her a few times than to assume that she was a childhood friend who I hadn't seen in over ten years. But that's exactly who she was. It turns out that she was living barely a few blocks away from me at the time and had just started attending services at KT. What an unbelievable small world we live in.

We've gotten together a few times since that unlikely reunion, and it never ceases to amaze me how much we still have in common after all this time. I don't believe in fate or anything like that, but I do believe in friendship, and I'm so excited to have Becky back in my life. (Not just because she's making me latkes for dinner.)

So in the spirit of Chanukah, here's to all of the happy coincidences like this one, to all of those times when things don't turn out the way we expect, but they turn out just the way that they should anyhow. Chag same'ach!