Tonight is the start of my all time favorite holiday, Pesach, (Passover) and I'm looking forward with happy anticipation to tonight's Seder. I will be with Savta and his family for this most wonderful tradition and I can barely contain myself in anticipation. I have always loved Pesach for numerous reasons and have so many wonderful memories if Seders past that I'm not quite sure where to start. The first one I have an actual real memory of (not from family lore) is the one at my maternal grandparent's home in Portland when I was 9 and my brother was 6. A major part of the Seder is drinking four glasses of wine. Children are often given grape juice, but not at my grandparents. To them, if a child was old enough to be part of the Seder, they were old enough to have real wine. Of course the kids were not expected to drink the full glass as adults are, but at my grandparent's Seders we got the real thing. The memory I will always of that Seder is of Jeff's( my (brother) head splashing into his bowl of chicken soup with matzo balls, and I do mean splash! He had been sneaking sips of the second traditionally required glass of wine from the end of the blessing over it ,until the first course of the meal (the soup) was served, and he was tipsy to say the least, and I distinctly remember the splash because some of the hot soup splashed on to me. My father was allowed to carry him to my Uncle Ralph's childhood bedroom to sleep it off, and Mom rushed around cleaning up the mess. That's about all I remember from that particular Seder. It wasn't long after that, that we started having Seder's at our house with just about everyone in the extended family there. My grandparents, including Dad's father, Dad's brother, his wife, and 2 kids, Mom's brother, his wife, and their 2 kids, her brother, his wife and 2 kids, and of course the 4 of us. We were also sometimes joined by our Catholic next door neighbor who was fascinated by Jewish holiday traditions. Those Seders often bordered on the slightly rowdy side of decorem. We had a great time, even if there were years when things pretty much ended after the post meal blessing, which often lead to skipping the end of the required reading of the Haggadah and finished with the raukus singing of the requisit tradtional end of Seder songs. From the minute the Seder was over, I starting looking forwards to the next one.
After my mother became sick with cancer, we started having the Seders at my house. I loved getting ready and cooking for it, and all of the above mentioned cast of characters came to mine, as well. My mother's last Seder was particularly memorable for several reasons, among them, the full cast of characters, and my son's acrivities during what should have been his nap and the fight my cousin's son got into with him. During his nap time, Aron woke up early and went to the bathroom quietly so as not to call attention to his activity. I had forgotten to take the huge turkey out to thaw in time, so, gave it a lukewarm warm bath to help it on it's way to thawdom. For some odd reason, Aron thought it would be a good idea to help it along by wrapping it up in toilet paper, and somehow managed to do just that even though he and the turkey were close to the same weight! He then decided that it was time to shave, just like Daddy, and climbed onto the counter under the long mirror and squirted the area of his face in the mirror with a whole can of his daddy's shaving soap. (Think about that for a minute and it makes perfect sense as he was used to standing on that counter while 'helping' Daddy shave, and he'd watch in the mirror). He took the razor and cut his thumb. By the time he got to the top of the stairs with his bloody (literally) thumb I was at the bottom of the stairs, and there stood the little tyke holding his bloody thumb with his other hand, surrounded by the toilet paper with which he had carpeted the whole landing, while wrapping the turkey in it. The sight that greated my eyes as I went up and took him to the bathroom to clean and bandaid his thumb was more than enough to cause a grown woman to cry, wall to wall toilet paper and a carefully wrapped turkey in the bath tub, and a child's face sized mass of shaving cream already sliding down the mirror were the outstanding and obvious to the eyes sight that were met by close to hysterical laughter. It was funny, but the very last thing I needed not such a short time before a huge meal had to be prepared for the Seder that night. I got him cleaned up, unwrapped the turkey, then, gave it a nice long shower to finish thawing it, took it down to the kitchen, stuffed it, and got it in the oven just on time. All of the other dishes were coming along nicely and it was all done on time. The family arrived on time as well, and while everyone was visiting and catching up before we started the Seder, my cousin Nancy made a comment to the effect that her son was the first to be named after our grandfather on our father's side. Nope, sorry, but that would be my son, who her own father had circumcised and named after his own father with great emotion. While my mother was explaining that to her (she was even there, at the Brit) her son went over to mine and pushed him over. Aron, of course got up and returned the favor, while my mother ripped into his mother, in a completely uncharacterist way. My mom was always the peace maker, but she was not going to let this go unchallenged. The boys made up and things were explained to little Abe in terms he could understand.
To the Seder. The first part went smoothly and the meal was good, if I do say myself. There is always a full glass of wine on the Seder table for Elija The Prophet, and there is a point when the door is opened for him to come in. That year (the one of my mother's last Seder with us)just before the door was reached to be opened, we all felt a very gentle, barely perceptable cool wind, and saw the edges of the table cloth move, and every single one of us saw the level in the wine glass go down, and a few tiny drops spill onto the plate under the glass. No one will ever convince any one of us that Elijah was not there. The hairs still stand up on my arms when I remember that very special Seder. Since being in Israel, when the kids were younger we were usually invited to close friends and I even had several with those same friends. After I gimped out, I went to one at my daughter's, it was her first child's first one, then, was gimpnapped to one by a good friend who lives in Carmiel, about 45 minutes away. The Seder was at his sister in law's near Haifa. I have had one at Gimp House with that family from the last flat in my building, and had one with them at their house, then 2 on my own with just Peg, and last year with Ayala and Moshe and some of their relatives. This year Savta told me that I going to their place and got no argument from me. I'm just about ready to go there, and am excited about sharing it with them. Oh, my, yes, I do love Pesach and the Seder.
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