Tuesday, April 02, 2013

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.

5 comments:

Stephanie Doyle said...

Sounds like the hangover was well worth it. And wine out of a sippy cup? I'll remember that when I'm older.

Molly O'Keefe said...

Ah! What an amazing sentiment. My husbands family also Jew-ish is drifting away from the high holidays as the older generation passes on. I wish my kids could have had this holiday done the way it was supposed to be. Right now, they just eat a lot of those dry flat crackers...

Sometimes hangovers are all right - they just are.

Eileen said...

The first time we put booze in her sippy cup it felt vaguely wrong. Now it just feels oh so right.

I'm not sure we do it right, Molly, but we do a lot of singing and pounding on the table. If I do say so myself, I made probably the most delicious charoset ever this year, too.

It did feel like a righteous hangover.

Maureen McGowan said...

I'm all for wine out of sippy cups. And traditions. Sounds like you had a great Passover, Eileen. In my house, we had Easter on Saturday (not exactly traditionalists here, either) and had taco night on Good Friday. Wine at both occasions. Quelle surprise. :)

Anonymous said...

That sounds really lovely, well, maybe not the hangover part.
I miss truly nursing my hangovers.. now I have to try and muscle through them, pretending they don't exist, when a little extra sleep, coffee and a big greasy breakfast is what I really need.

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