From Bondage to Freedom

Well, there were some interesting seders I missed this year - The Forward had an article about a New York Kinky Jews' seder with emphasis on the "bondage" rather than freedom - this would have been fun for me and hubby to attend as strictly voyeurs. We'll have to put this down on our "interesting seder wish list".

This year we decided to invite the newest members of our clan. The "distinguished" family of my new son-in-law. With our lovely heirloom Noritake from 1938 and my mother-in-law's silver plated setting, our table looked pretty distinguished, if I might say so myself. Being the secular family that they are, they pretty much ran through the story until the food part,which ended their part of the seder. After they left my daughter and hubby finished the rest of the seder.

Our guests came with two cases of soda, a big basket full of chocolates, a big basket full of soaps and lotions from Sheinkin. My daughter came with a bag full sample lotions and creams and stuff she didn't want after she cleaned up their room for Passover. And my daughter's mother-in-law had noticed that we didn't have a microwave, which we only use for popcorn and food warming. I told her it wasn't necessary. I had planned to buy one next month - an expensive one with a grill, since I was planning to use the grill more than the microwave. But they walked in with one anyways....

The next day Hubby opens it up and it's non-digital and white. Not black or aluminum. It had a slanted window, which made it look like a retro mini washing machine rather than a microwave. He put it back in the box.

"I'm not keeping anything that makes me angry. This makes me angry." I laughed instead of getting angry at him for being ungrateful for our gifts. We're stashing the thing in our storage room - maybe one day, one of our kids with no taste will want it.

In the evening, my son had Pesach-itis. He was doubled up with stomach pain. Trying to loosen his blockage, I did some reflexology on his feet and soon after he was running to the bathroom. While I feel asleep, he missed on the way to the toilet and hurled in the hallway. Hubby was screaming for someone to clean it up - that someone being me, of course, as there was no one else in the house. This is my vacation, I thought to myself, as I had to clean up the mess, getting out of bed in the midst of a lovely slumber. Please God, don't let anyone get deathly ill in the middle of the night at our home, because Hubby and I are the Kings and Queens of Bitches when we are woken up and we'll just let that person rot until morning.

But my THIRD eldest daughter, the one I call the Complainer, called me from Tiberias last night. She told me in an unusually tiny voice rather than her regular raspy one, that she and her boyfriend got engaged. She has a ring. It's official. And if we thought that we had just gotten over one wedding, we now have to plan another. It's happiness and this is truly a season of Freedom for us. But the silly little girl really believes that she is on a journey from Bondage to Freedom. She has no idea, at the tender age of 21, that a married woman's journey is just the opposite.