| LifeTakes |

Rooted

By Rivka Streicher | April 5, 2020

We will sit, not with parents or grandparents, but ourselves, like we do on a Tuesday evening for a lazy supper

Growing up, Pesach was always spent with my grandparents, even though we lived far away.

For all of my teenage-hood, a cousin and I would fly every Rosh Chodesh Nissan to help my grandmother prepare, with my family following later.

When we sat down together — three generations, sometimes four — there was a sense that the Seder could take us back to where it all began. On this night, our parents were children too. On this night we were all children, asking the Mah Nishtanah of the Great Tatte Leiben.

My grandfather would direct questions at participants, so you, out of the two dozen people there, felt recognized, essential. There were the songs we’d come to love. The reenactment of the matzah on our backs, the cChasal sSiddur Pesach dance outside, a lively circle of tired, happy men under the moon.

I know the primacy of grandparents at a Seder.

A few years back, we spent the Seder with my husband’s grandparents, my entire in-law’s family trooping over. My grandfather’s health was failing, but having him there, at the head, upholding minhagim, was a memory to treasure. Even now that Seder stands out, gold and crystal and solemn joy.

At some point, my grandmother started to recount her stories. V’higadeta l’vinchah, she said, this was her tale. What it was like post-war, the public schools of Europe, the gymnasiums, what she fought, how they lived, how they came out strong.

This was not her way, but maybe she had a premonition that she’d be moving to Israel soon, and that they wouldn’t be able to come back.

We laughed. We connected. My grandfather hummed a sacred tune, kneitchen and all. We were touching something. Harking back, down the family tree, to the roots, to the 70 souls….

******

“We don’t know what’s going to be with my mother,” my neighbor told me last year. Her mother, a proud, feisty grandmother, had recently had a stroke.

It was two weeks till Pesach, and instead of cooking, her mother sat outside with a Hungarian aide. I saw her from my window, sitting on the green. This gregarious woman, being wheeled around in her chair.

Midday, the European workershelp gathered in the park with their charges. They squawked and cackled in their guttural language, clucked to the babies, got out their own food, their cigarettes. A party of non-Jews, and right there sits my neighbor.

Could she be impervious to it all? If they’d only know who she is. The powerhouse of the neighborhood. She couldn’t have lost that personality. She used to tell us how she ran her husband’s business, sharp as tack. She drove him to meetings. She outlived her husband and continued loving life. She’d told us she’d given up skirts forever in favor of housedresses, because she was at that glorious age where she could do whatever she wanted!

Was this really her staring off into the distance, while the Hungarian aide chatted on the phone?

“What’s going to be Pesach?” her daughter cried.

I told her about that Seder experience with my ailing grandfather.

As we talked, we looked over at her mother. She’d lost a lot of her faculties — her speech was slurred, her words not always aligned, her mobility limited. But suddenly she glanced at the aide and gave this look. And we knew: she’s still her.

“Pesach was…” her daughter told me afterwards. “Special, really. Yes, it was different, the aide was there, Mom had her moments. But she was a grandparent to her grandchildren. Queen of the Seder….”

******

And suddenly, this year we don’t know where we’ll be.

Our grandparents are home, quarantined behind lock and key in their homes. They are the vulnerable, the over-seventie 70s who we need to protect at all costs.

And what of us? Young people like me. The possibility of us making a Seder alone — just a couple and a baby, who’ll likely be sleeping — is all too real.

We have no dishes. No silver kos shel Eeliyahu, no stacks of wine-stained Haggados, no matzah – tash faded and fraying but with a famed history.

We will sit, not with parents or grandparents, but ourselves, like we do on a Tuesday evening for a lazy supper.

We’ve been thrown into this situation. No time to get things, to amass a beautiful collection, a little this year, a little the next.

But I know that as we stand for Kiddush in plastic cups with our Yom Tov best, and tired, hopeful smiles, we’ll have nowhere to turn but back. We’ve never done it ourselves; but we’ll do it as you did it. That tune, this song. The order, the pointing, the actions.

We will not be on our own. As we sit and recline, you will be right there with us.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 688)

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