Sneaky Holidays - March 26, 2021 - A Pandemic Parenting Note

Faced with another quarantined holiday I have spent the past week going back and forth between grand plans of making seder dinner on my own, to thinking, “maybe matzo ball soup and Manischewitz gefilte fish will be enough.” Even though I’ve been writing about it here for weeks, Pesach has snuck up on me, and now it feels like I’m already too late to make it happen. My neighborhood grocery store is out of beet horseradish, the one Manischewitz endcap didn’t even have matzo meal, and I just want to throw my hands up and say, “whatever.” 
 
Hannukah felt this way, too. 
 
So did Sukkot. 
 
It’s not that I don’t love these holidays, I do. It’s that these holidays evoke a sense of family & community. Pesach has typically been the one holiday where I didn’t have to lead anything, but could be a participant, letting myself fall into the comfortable and predictable embrace of family rituals. We are faced with another Pesach where, for many of us, that is not an option. God-willing, some of you have been bubbled up with extended family and can safely re-enact ancient rituals both national and personal. Some of us will be going it alone this Passover, for the second time around. 
 
Here’s my plan: I’m going to hunt down the remaining things on my grocery list, and on Saturday afternoon I’m going to carefully set my table, as generations before have. I’m going to place my laptop at the head of the table and let the faces and voices of my community keep us company as we make our way through the Haggadah. 
 
And I’m going to make and eat so much matzah-bark.  (https://thecolorfulkitchen.com/2017/04/07/vegan-chocolate-salted-caramel-matzah-bark-passover/)