Like wearing white before Memorial Day, thinking about Pesach before Purim is a faux pas best kept under wraps. Any mention of the “P” word while everyone else is packing mishloach manot raises eyebrows at best, and it can set others entirely on edge. But Pesach is where my mind was, even as I was baking hamantaschen.
Now, just days after Purim, that thinking has gone into overdrive. For the moment, the house is still teeming over with nosh from the recent festivities, but I am walking around in a kind of pre-Pesach stupor. The cleaning and the shopping and the spiritual cleansing are off on a mad, three-legged race to the finish line, and I’m cheering them on at the top of my lungs.
Like a whirling dervish, I twirl in an ecstatic housekeeping frenzy that limits writing and crafting time. I thumb through my Pesach recipe binder and begin stocking up on potato starch. Eying cabinets and closets, I plot out a new and improved approach to turning over the kitchen, all the while daydreaming about setting the seder table with my grandmother’s china.
One son rolled his eyes last night and reported that I’d gone into “Pesach Crazy Mode.” The second, my squirrel, offered his irresistible grin as a preemptive apology for the crumbs I am destined to find in the least likely of places. The third asked if it was time for him to burn the chametz.
My sweet husband knows more or less what is going on in my already Pesadik head, so he does the heavy lifting and asks few questions. He has even made his own quiet mark on our preparations, buying new stove hood screens to save me from having to scrub off a year’s worth of grease with acid-based solvents. That, my friends, is love.
Meanwhile, life goes on. I still have to drive carpool and laundry continues to amass at the foot of the washing machine in the basement. But it all plays second fiddle to the bigger, Pesach picture looming on the horizon.
This is my season. Game on.
No comments:
Post a Comment