I love my family's Passover seder. During my college years, I could never manage to come home for seder, and instead suffered through various subpar iterations (the exception being the year I lived in France, when my parents' visit coincided with Pesach and we experienced one of the most wonderful seder meals of all time at the home of some French friends). But for the past twelve years, I haven't missed a single seder en famille.
Perhaps someday I'll have enough space to host a seder of my own, and my mother will see fit to relinquish the honors of hosting. But until then, I will be content to sit in my place at the corner of the long table, just to my mother's left and with easy access to the kitchen door. I will utter my requisite moans and groans at the dog-eared state of our yet-to-be-updated family Haggadah, complete with the cover my brother and I created on our Apple II in 1987. I will dissolve into giggles when we sing my father's special Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry spiritual, in which we "tell old Gorbachev/to let my people go." My mother and I will delight ourselves -- if no one else -- with our annual medley of Passover parody songs. And we will make my mother's night by attempting to sing all the verses of Echod Mi Yodeah in the melody only our family seems to know.
The table will be too crowded, the mazoh balls will be too dense (just the way I like them), and the chrain will be eye-wateringly bitter. My mother will insist that we drink at least one cup of "the good stuff" before we gratefully turn our glasses over to the more tolerable kosher Merlot. We will be ravenously hungry by the time we eat our first bite of mazoh, because my father will require that we not only read the entire (customized, lengthy) Haggadah but discuss it, too. And then there will be more food than we could possibly eat and enough laughter and silliness to erase any memory of slavery, plagues, and desert wandering.
We will search endlessly for the afikomen, marveling once again at my father's ability to baffle us despite the jam-packed room and his seemingly permanent presence at the table. And when we finally find it, he will force me to bargain with him for its return, though I know we'll (again) be getting a $1 coin (and, on occasion, a little extra treat).
We will tell the same stories, ask the same questions, and laugh at the same jokes. There will always be a stray Jew or two to bring fresh blood to the table, but for the most part, the faces will remain the same (if a bit older).
I suppose that one of these years the prayed-for will come to pass, and we will celebrate in Jerusalem. But until then, my own seder-closing wish is simply this: Next year, in Boulder again.
Attention all readers: my matzoh balls are NOT dense. Yes, they used to adhere to the soupspoon to the point where you could lift them out of the bowl whole, but those days are long gone. My knoedlach (matzoh balls) are huge, fluffy, tasty creations that any Jewish Julia Child would be proud to call her own. Madeline and her brother, who also rues the day that their mother learned the true art of the knoedl (singular of knoedlach), are dear but misguided children on this subject.
Posted by: mom | April 07, 2004 at 11:43 PM