Pesach was good! Mid-divorce, I hosted everyone. And it was great.
In addition to my I-still-call-her-my-mother-in-law and Michael, my parents were there and my uncle. My closest and oldest friend and her 7-year-old daughter came and the kids had a blast. Her 7-year-old and my 7-year-old even let my 4-year-old find the afikomen because he was literally having a fit about the possibility of not finding it, starting at about karpas. Thank you, mature 7-year-olds!
I didn’t feel as stressed as I thought I would. The food was all preprepared and heated up, there was plenty of it, no one minded that I served the same thing the second night that I did the first. (My rule is if you don’t like it the first night, eat something you didn’t try on the second. And I make enough so that there should be plenty to choose from.)
The paper plates were a smart idea. There was still a lot of serving utensils and fancy wine and water glasses to wash, and my still-healing hand definitely got fatigued by the morning of the second seder. But it was all okay.
You know what? It was more than okay. It was super duper okay. Not perfect, not as lengthy and Rabbinically-minded as I desire, not as Messianic in its promise as I hoped, but that’s also okay. Because sometimes it’s enough to all sit together, and to laugh, and to eat, and to experience some tension, and to remember it’s important to work hard at being kind and nice and compassionate and to appreciate what we have.
Now that the seders are over, we start counting the Omer (49 days until Shavuot) and with the counting we get closer and closer to the Revelation at Sinai. I hope everyone’s next 40-some odd days are slowly and steadily helping you achieve not perfection, but something close to it. Because that’s okay too. And it’s something to be grateful for.
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