Very Drunk Writer

I know we're changing our name, but last Saturday night just left me in a place way too appropriate. My family finally had its Passover seder. We are, as my kids like to say, only Jew-ish so we don't feel like we have to actually have our seders on the first and second nights of the holiday. We don't go around with candles and feathers removing all the bread from the house. We do, however, honor the tradition of drinking a lot of wine at the seder.

It's not just getting drunk, though. The whole point of Passover is retelling the story of the exodus from Egypt. It's all about the importance of passing stories down from one generation to another. I love the message of the story. None of us are free until we all are free. We were all slaves and it's our job to help other people gain their freedom. We must open our hearts and our homes to the lonely and homeless because we were once strangers in a strange land ourselves.

And we remind ourselves and teach our children about these important lessons by telling and retelling this story. We tell about the hardships we faced. We tell about the baby left in the rushes. We tell about the plagues. We tell about the last minute flight. We eat really dry flat crackers so the point of the story really gets hammered home.

We've had a few huge seders, but this year we kept it small. Just family. My mom, who has a harder and harder time every week it seems, was drinking her red wine out of a sippy cup so she didn't spill. My youngest was still pretty much drinking Martinelli's, but he made sure to have all four glasses.

I spent Sunday morning on the couch with coffee and the newspaper. I couldn't even manage a hangover run, Molly. But it felt good. It may be the most important drunk writer holiday of the year for me and I felt I honored it well.