When Teresa Strasser was growing up, her mom was a hippie, raising her kids alone as part of San Francisco s counterculture.
Strasser, today a syndicated TV host and Emmy Award-winning comedy writer, remembers her mom as always doing her best, but never really making it as a June Cleaver-type.
But during one Hanukkah, her mom surprised her kids.
“Mine is a small story about Hanukkah, which can be a real parenting crucible as it involves not only flying in the face of the omnipresence of Christmas … but also coming up with eight gifts per kid,” Strasser said. “My mother was a single, working mom and, frankly, momming wasn’t exactly her thing. But she crushed Hanukkah.”