I was ten years old that Purim, in fifth grade. That year,

1) I shot up from being the shortest kid in class to my adult height,

2) Romeo and Juliet was the school play, and

3) Mimmi Cohen came to town.

All three factors made fifth grade a tough, miserable year. I felt awkward with my new height. I wanted the lead in the play, but knew that it was a popularity contest.

I felt sure that Mimmi—she’d cross out any other way people spelled her name—would grab not only the lead, but all supporting roles and extras in the play, sweeping in from out of town with her Esprit button-down shirts, black nylons and shiny, grown-up loafers.

In contrast, I wore a lot of neon. My favorite outfit was a bright pink dress with neon green and yellow squigglies zigzagging down the skirt, worn with fold-down ruffly white socks and silver L. A. Gear sneakers. The Friday of the tryouts for the play, I dressed carefully, taking care that the folds of my ruffly socks were even at both ankles.

The tryouts were in the morning. Mimmi and I were called out of class together. She held the blue hall pass, and we walked in icy silence down to the auditorium. I felt gargantuan next to Mimmi, trying to keep pace with her tiny steps in my huge silver sneakers. She walked probably as she’d seen her mother walk in high heels—quick, brisk steps that made her heels clop-clop on the cement like horses’ hooves. She pointed her chin at the sky, pulling down the corners of her mouth and patting her blond curls.

“I already know what I’m going to wear for my costume,” she said. “I have a real ball gown at home.”

“Me, too,” I lied. “It’s… indecipherable.” I’d seen that word the day before in a magazine, and thought it sounded glamorous.

“That’s nice,” Mimmi said, shrugging. “I hope this won’t take too long. I already know I’m going to get it.”

The bottom dropped out from my stomach. “How do you know?” My world was spinning, but I wasn’t about to show her how I felt.

“I just do,” she said. “Who else would they pick? Everybody else here is a nerd.”

“I am not,” I mumbled. Tears blurred my vision, and I blinked, trying to force them back into my eyes so Mimmi wouldn’t see. “S-something in my eye,” I stammered.

We reached the auditorium. The dank smell of over-boiled peas and an Ajaxed floor wafted from the lunchroom next door, and I held my breath as Mimmi showed the blue hall pass to the teacher running the tryouts.

“This way, girls,” she said. I felt nauseous and dizzy as I sat, waiting for Mimmi to finish so I could show the panel how good a Juliet I would be. Mimmi strutted on stage as cocky as a Bantam rooster. She rolled her eyes and clasped her hands as she spoke, her voice traveling up and down the scale like a roller coaster. With the last phrase, she dropped to her knees with a huge fake sob. Then she stood up, flashed all her teeth in a stagy smile, and curtsied deeply.

“Thank you very much, dear.” Mimmi tossed her head and exited down the steps at the front of the stage, grinning as if she starred in a toothpaste advertisement.

“Next.”

I mounted the steps onto the stage. Mimmi sat directly next to the panel, her arms crossed, swinging her feet back and forth.

I stood for a minute, focusing my thoughts.

“Are you ready, dear?”

I attacked that script for all I was worth. For each of Mimmi’s eye rolls, I added two. Each of her vocal crescendos was eclipsed. For my finale, instead of merely falling to my knees, I fell facedown on the stage. That should show them who Juliet should be.

“Thank you.”

I stood up, still under the spell of my performance. “Thank you.” I bowed.

“You may go back to class. Miss Cohen, please wait while we discuss rehearsals.”

My face turned scarlet. I walked sedately from the auditorium. I couldn’t see where I was going for the hot tears running down my flushed cheeks. Only when I rounded the corner, far from Mimmi’s grin, did I allow myself to weep.

A car pulled into the parking lot. That looks like our van, I thought. I wished my mother could come and spirit me away from the tryouts, Mimmi, my gigantic self.

The car door opened. My mother climbed out holding two brown lunch bags and made her way to the office. We often ran out of time in the morning for my mother to make lunch, so she brought it to school later on. I held my breath. Would she see me?

My mother went into the office. The clock stood still. I imagined her chatting with the receptionist, writing out two pink slips, one for my brother and one for me, to come to the office and get our lunches, turning away and putting her hand on the door—there!

My mother headed back towards the car. She took out her keys.

“Mommy!”

“Hi, sweetie!” my mother’s face lit up when she saw me. “What are you doing here?”

“Mimmi got the part,” I sniffled.

My mother set her lips for an instant. Then she leaned toward me. “Do you know what?” she said. “I left the hamantashen dough chilling in the fridge. Why don’t you come home with me for lunch and we’ll make hamantashen together?”

“Yeah!” I said. Truly, this was an act of G-d. I ran to the car.

“Don’t tell your brother. It’s our secret,” my mother said.

Ten minutes later saw my mother and me in the sunlit kitchen, rolling out hamantash dough with my great-grandmother’s wooden rolling pins, shiny and smooth as glass from over sixty years of use. The dough spread under our hands like a thick puddle. The ache in my heart abated.

“Do you know,” my mother said, “this is the same recipe Grandma used when she made hamantashen with her mother in the Old Country?”

“They made hamantashen back then?”

“Of course,” my mother said. “And before that.”

“When before?”

“For almost two thousand years, maideleh.”

Two thousand years. I pressed my tongue to my upper lip, trying to grasp a gap of time, vague and dead as the flat pages of my history book, suddenly filled with people, great-grandmothers and mothers and daughters, hamantashening for Purim. “Two thousand years ago Shakespeare wasn’t even born.”

“And you know what? G-d gave us His Torah even before that,” my mother said.

My mother and I cut circles from the flattened dough, filled them, and pinched them shut. I tried not to let any of the filling peep out, the mahn a delicious secret, like G-d’s boundless love, kept by generations of Purim merrymakers. G-d chose us. As I squeezed a hamantash together at the top, I felt honored to be part of the miracle.

That day in our kitchen, I realized that Purim was more than three-cornered cookies. Our legacy was more lasting than any of the worries on my ten-year-old agenda. The school play, Mimmi Cohen, even being taller than my classmates, would pass. Our Torah and His chosen people would remain. I smiled at my mother. This was our secret.