I’m conducting my usual inventory when I come across an unhappy find

I

have a yearly ritual. A week before Rosh Chodesh Nissan, I take inventory of the contents of my Pesach kitchen cabinets (Baking soda from 2019, anyone?). I then make a detailed list of the random items like Ziploc bags and frilly toothpicks that I have amassed from years gone by. It makes me feel like I’m preparing for Pesach when what I’m actually doing is the easiest of the myriad available tasks. Somehow, knowing that I have polka dot straws and parchment paper and smoked paprika and muffin liners makes me feel prepared. (If all else fails, and my sponge cakes flop, and the meat is grainy, at least we can sip our milk in style.)

This year finds me sorting through my stuff, glad that our married and single children will soon be all together again. I shuffle spatulas around, wondering why everything looks so grimy when I know everything was cleaned before it was put back into the cabinets. Had I been in such a rush last year to get to the pizza part of the evening that my cleaning had been halfhearted? Or was it that inferior neon-pink dish soap that had caused this griminess?

I’m conducting my usual inventory when I come across an unhappy find. In my attempt to cram everything into the cabinets last year, I accidentally wedged my water pitcher too close to a stack of plates, and one had cracked.

Ouch.

Now, lest you assume that this casualty was an heirloom from my Bubby Goldberg or Bubby Singer, it wasn’t. Nor was it a once-in-a-lifetime Home Goods find or a treasured wedding gift.

The casualty is a hard plastic sectional plate, meant for babies, with a delicate countryside design. It features frolicking sheep in a pasture in one section, a long-maned pony in the next, and a bucolic farmhouse in the last. There is a pastel border reminiscent of the 1990s, when we had received the plate. It is quaint. Oh, how I adore quaint.

Pesach cabinets are shrine-like, a jumble of sentimentality, every ladle and grater precious. If it’s not nostalgic already, it’s destined to become nostalgic very soon. And a child’s item has double the sentimentality.  I am enveloped in wistfulness at the realization that it has cracked.

I remember its origin quite well. We received the plate as a free promotion when I signed up for some magazine around 27 years ago. At that point, we were still joining my parents in Brooklyn every Pesach, so I packed the plate to take with us. It was super exciting to feed our first baby real food! Apples and chicken and stuff that we were eating ourselves! We took turns spooning it in and commenting on how much Tzvi seemed to enjoy Real Food. This was an epoch in his life, and this plate marked it as such. A few of us commented on how utterly cute the sheep motif was, so apropos with the Pesach, Matzah, and Maror theme.

Year after year, we would lovingly schlep the sheep plate with us. We used it for each of our children, transforming the task of feeding our tot into something more noteworthy because he had his very own tableware.

After a while, we transitioned into making Pesach ourselves in Monsey. The plate was stored in boxes in the attic and then later in our Pesach kitchen. It was nice to see it emerge each year. It was Tradition, with a capital T. And oh, how we Jewish mamas cling to Tradition!

Our little plate has made it through six babies, countless choo-choo (“Open up for the sweet potato delivery coming through!”) and helicopter rides (“Here are the carrots, coming in for a landing, zoom!”).

With the arrival of our grandsons, I was hoping to remake those memories with new babies. Alas, it is not meant to be. The cracked plate belongs in the trash can.

But not right now. Because right now, it’s taking me on a wistful journey back in time to when I was young and happily frazzled, when part of Pesach was matching ruffled ankle socks and little berets.

I clutch the plate, content to wallow. My memories are tinged with sadness because the plate hasn’t lasted forever, and if I want to add unnecessary symbolism to this maudlin situation, it probably means that nothing lasts forever.

Soon enough, I’ll move on. Maybe I’ll even go to Amazing Savings and buy a cute new plate for the babies. Maybe.

For now, I am right where I want to be, stuck between a row of memories in those old-style self-stick photo albums, turning page after page, loving where I was almost as much as I love where I am.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 938)