chag sameach

It's a cliché, but for good reason, I guess: mothering comes with a decent amount of guilt attached. Guilt that you're overindulging, guilt that you're depriving, guilt that you've made the wrong decision. Holidays shouldn't induce guilt, but they often do, and the Spring ones are no exception. This year, George noticed those dreadful pre-made Easter baskets in the stores. Specifically, he noticed the one displayed prominently at our local grocery store that seemed to have been made just to entice him -- containing not one, but two full-sized, "big guy" basketballs -- and he asked to buy it on more than one occasion. When I tried feebly to explain that, actually, those are Easter baskets and we don't celebrate Easter, but rather we have a very long dinner during which we read a story and eat some food ("Noodles?!" Uh, no...) and drink a lot of wine, well, he was unimpressed. Passover has no dreidel and gelt, no presents. It's an admittedly tough sell to a two year old, albeit one I'm more than willing to keep peddling, as these traditions are important. The least "fun" being, arguably, the most important. 

So, as we sat around our hosts' seder table for the second year running -- as our friend led the meal in broken Hebrew befitting a crowd of Athiests, cultural Jews and... others -- my son ran around with his new little friend, having as much fun as a couple of toddlers could have at a Pesach seder. He spit out the maror, passed wholesale on the dinner and didn't live up to my dorky dream of joining everyone in saying cheerfully, "Next year in Jerusalem!" now that he actually could. 

I felt bad for bringing a rowdy child to a seder, no matter how irreverent. I wanted to supply coloring pages, to make a cute felt envelope for the afikomen and pass out masks illustrating the plagues for any guests who were game to wear them, but my shit was decidedly not together. I wanted George to have fun, to see that he didn't need an Easter basket or a chocolate bunny, but I also wanted him to understand the gravity of a holiday without gimmicks. I failed, it seemed, on both counts. And felt guilty. 

Despite all that, after a lovely meal with friends new, old and somewhere in between -- Zelda's first seder -- we came home and went to bed. The next day was glorious. Sunshiny. Springtime. I decided to give myself a break: that our cultural identity wouldn't be compromised if I indulged a little, to celebrate this beautiful season. After all, we've made it through the winter, and our modern, first world plagues: seasonal affective disorder, outrageous heating costs, perpetually damp pant hems and a lack of local fresh fruit, icy roads, waiting for the bus in the rain. Our chickens are laying reliably again -- as sure a sign of improved conditions as any -- so bright eggs may as well be hidden around their yard for a sun-starved toddler to find. 

Find them he did. And he had a ball. More fun than his time playing around the Pesach seder? Who's to say? And does it matter? Cultural sell-out or not, I want my kids to have fond memories of childhood. While that might not mean they get the double basketball grocery store Easter basket, I'm pretty okay with the plain old wicker one, and eggs filled with dimes. And if later they decide to go back outside to hunt for worms?

Yeah, much better than a stuffy church. Or temple, for that matter. Sunday best is relative. 

passing over

As I think is the case with anyone who has ever had children, tradition became more important once I had a kid. Where holidays were stupid or creepy or commercialized or boring or patriarchal before, they are now kind of... not so bad. This year saw our first Passover seder with George and my first Passover seder in a long time. Atheists can hang during most Jewish holidays, but Passover is heavy on God, the "reason for the season" looming too large to work around, the very basis of the celebration being so literally religious rather than cultural. No doy, right? It's a religious holiday. But so much of Judaism is about being Jewish, about being together, remembering, about righting wrongs and doing good and eating and having fun. If you don't like the closed-minded aspects of orthodoxy, you can leave them in favor of the easy-going, loving arms of Reform. All this is great until you start talking parting seas, plagues and killing firstborn sons; then, you lose me. Because I don't walk under ladders and I hold my breath as I drive past cemetaries, but smiting and miracles? God offing kids to make a point? No. Thus, I've always pretty much opted out of Passover.

But now? I have a firstborn son. A son I want to have a cultural identity and childhood memories to support that identity. I want to give him traditions to pass down, or at least roll his eyes about with his siblings when they go out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve. The gift of relative universality -- of being able to accept an invitation to a new friend's home to eat a nasty sandwich of horseradish and matzah, sing familiar songs and know without a doubt that you will leave wine-drunk -- it's no college education or heirloom jewelry, but everything we inherit can't be one of the hits. I'm learning that I can participate without agreeing. Say the words for their own sake. Swallow my indignation and suspend my disbelief while we tell a round-table version of one of the world's oldest stories, whose moral is of perseverance and vindication. I can teach my own firstborn who, according to legend, would've been spared, not to take his own privilege for granted. I can teach him that not everything requires such a critical eye. 

If George grows up liking once-a-year kugel and flourless macaroons, knowing the best places to hide the afikomen and able to sing songs in sloppy Hebrew, well, that may not be the explicit purpose of Passover, but it's good enough for me.