I knew exactly what my mother meant by “organizing and cleaning” my closet for Pesach.
I would need a miracle to please her

"Ahhh, the joy of Pesach cleaning!” said no one ever. At least no one who shares a similar genetic makeup with me.

Whoever said that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree never met my mother and me. Unfortunately, in our scenario, the apple rolled far, far, far away from the tree and perhaps was even crated and shipped off to another universe. That’s how different the two of us are.

I’m convinced that when my mother was a student, her neat writing stood like perfect soldiers on the page and words stayed within the margins of her loose-leaf paper. I’m sure she never forgot to do her homework and always submitted assignments on time.

My notes, if you can even call them notes, are artistically designed with doodle masterpieces and swirly fonts dancing gracefully in and out of the margins. I always forget to do my homework and submit my assignments a day after the deadline.

Take another example: my morning ritual. Until my mother decided I was old enough to prepare my own clothes in the morning, she would lay them out perfectly the night before: shirt, skirt, socks, and shoes. Nowadays I yank stuff off the hangers and pull four pairs of shoes out of the closet through bleary eyes, minutes before loud honking announces the arrival of my bus.

Okay, so I think you get the picture. Or at least a vague idea.

Anyway, before Pesach (that means before Purim in our house) my mother approached me with an unidentifiable expression imprinted on her perfectly made-up face. I prophetically predicted there was a bombshell coming.

“Etty, Pesach is a few weeks away. Tatty and I decided that this year you are mature enough to clean and organize your own closet for Pesach. If I were you, I would not procrastinate. You have enough time to do the job well if you start as soon as possible. You know from experience that if you leave things for the last minute…”

She didn’t need to finish her sentence to remind me of the time I offered to bake a three-tiered cake for a class party and only remembered my offer the morning of the party. I spent the entire morning phoning bakeries to find out if any of them sold three-tiered cakes. Then, I went through the embarrassment of having my father drive me to the other side of town to pick up a three-tiered cake… a very nebby three-tiered cake. (If you wonder why I offered such an extravagant contribution, I’m actually capable of pulling off said cake. But not an hour before the party.)

So, after the bombshell (See? I’m a prophet) my tongue became paralyzed with fear. This is the worst decision my parents ever made, I thought miserably.