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April 18, 2008
Is It Enough?
Meredith Jacobs
Special to the Jewish Times
Somehow the house is ready. Just like every year. Somehow the chametz got packed away and the pesachdik came out. Just like every year. But somehow the seder is no longer like it was.
Some things are the same. Aunt Aileen asking us over and over if we’ve ever seen such big, fluffy matzoh balls. “No, Aunt Aileen, we’ve never seen such big, fluffy matzoh balls.”
Uncle Saul still leads, but it’s not as long as it used to be. Or maybe now, it just doesn’t seem so long.
Still, whoever misbehaves has to read “wicked son.” And, like always, Mom has to read the passage with all the rabbis’ names.
This year, the children (almost too old to be saying the Four Questions) can sit for hours, read the Hebrew better than their parents, can truly participate.
This year, I keep looking for Grandma Hilda, who hasn’t been there for years, but I keep looking.
Instead I see my parents and my aunts and uncles. I see cousins who used to play with us and tease that a seal lived in the basement. When did they become the grown-ups?
At the seder I remember, I never knew those people whose names we carried. But those who the children at the seder now are named for? They were at the seder I remember.
This year I am acutely aware that this is the seder my children will remember. When they are grown, will they look around their table and remember us? What else will they remember?
When their children dance around the edges of the room, will they look at us and see us as young parents? The way I see my parents. My sister in California calls every year to ask how everyone looks. “Fine. Like always.” To me they do. I cannot see them clearly. Memory filters my vision.
I remember sitting on the stairs on the side of the room that was too small but somehow held everyone. I remember singing the Four Questions with my little sister the way Daddy had taught us. I remember wearing buckle shoes and pretty dresses. I remember wanting to eat dinner in the dining room with the men and the big cousins, but always eating in the kitchen with the women and the children. And I remember the year I was allowed to sit with them and how quickly I ran back to the comfort of the kitchen where it was much more fun.
I remember the year Mom stayed in Philadelphia because Uncle Joe was dying.
I remember the college friends my cousins brought. Now their children are in college. I remember sitting in Grandma Hilda’s chair the year I was pregnant with Sofie. I remember Sofie’s first seder. She was 6 months old and cried because it was hot in the crowded room, and I had to spend the seder with her in Aunt Aileen and Uncle Saul’s bedroom in front of the huge mirrored closet because it made her smile. She’s in middle school now.
What does she think? Does she love seeing her cousins? Does she understand why we tease about the matzoh balls? Does she feel how important it is that we use those stained, red haggadot with the deer on the cover because we remember when they weren’t stained? Does she know we can’t leave until we’ve sung “The Seder is Over”? Does she look around and try to burn in the memories?
And so on this night of so many questions I ask: Did we do enough? Make it special enough? Different enough? On this night, did we create moments that she will remember?