Growing up in a mixed marriage (father Sephardic, mother Ashkenazic) is hard. There are struggles over religious identity, traditional family roles, and recipes; never mind whose mother is the better cook. The situation gets all the more sticky when you add to the mix, not only a ten year generation gap, but home continents being half of an entire planet apart. What begins as a gap can quickly become a chasm.
This was true, very often, but on Pesach there seemed to be a little less turbulence on the water. Perhaps it was because time was of the essence. There is no time to quibble over little stuff. The holiday is coming whether you are ready for it or not. Unlike Shabbat (sundown Friday night to sundown Saturday night) which anyone can struggle through for 25 hours, there is no muddling through an 8-day holiday with a kitchen that has not been properly prepared. My Aba would step aside, heading out of the house for long hours only making rare appearances to drop off what seemed like an endless supply of shopping bags filled with nuts, apples, romaine lettuce, and parsley. In the meantime, my mom would muster us troops. We would spend days lugging boxes up the stairs; deliver their precious Passover contents on to clean covered tables; empty cabinets one dish and cup at a time, wrapping them ever so carefully in an assortment of collected Sunday comics and discarded Sports sections, and repacking them for the trek down to the basement where they would spend the week in isolation.
Two sets of dishes came up and down the stairs, followed by two sets of pots. Then came the silverware and the cups. Serving trays followed baking sheets, which came with table cloths, dish towels and an assortment of miscellany that had been collected over the years. The Passover "set" seemed to be home to the remnants of inherited detritus from relatives passed, houses and paths abandoned, and the group of courageous lone survivors from every set of glassware that had the misfortune to come in contact with three reckless children and a father disengaged from the rules of kitchen safety. Over the course of a very intense week, the ragtag bunch displaced our regular hodge-podge, and when the last piece had been unwrapped and put on the shelf, we knew we were ready for the Chag (holiday).
Then, one year, something changed. It wasn't our routine, or our frantic run to the finish line, or anything like that. I was home from college and we were blessed to have my Uncle and Aunt, Jamile and Carmela, join us for the holiday this year. As we marched up and down the stairs, sweating and stacking, moving and shuffling, they stood - each against a doorpost - tisking at me and shaking their heads. At first I assumed it was because they wanted to help and we hadn't asked them too, which was somewhat true, both out of respect, but also because there is no real way to integrate an outsider into a routine so well practiced over so many years. But, I was wrong. They weren't upset at being left out. They were disappointed (with me in particular) with the amount of extra work we were creating. I'll never forget the way my Uncle drew my forehead to his, looked me straight in the eye and asked, "How can you make so much work for your mother?"
It would be years before I understood what he meant. So here it is. Sephardim don't need to worry about kashering glass for Pesach. The halacha (law) is that they simply need to be clean of any left over food, washed, dried, and put away. All the glassware and glass dinnerware we had in our year-long set was completely kosher for the holiday. The cabinets had been emptied and transported and moved for no real reason (that they could see) at all. As my father's son, I had failed to instill the Sephardic minhag (custom) in my father's house. Since my dad was out shopping, it was clearly my responsibility, and I had blown it.
Today, our Pesach cleaning is much less frenetic. I have learned the minhag well, our house has its own crazy routine, and we impress the kids into service, just as we had been. But I learned some really key lessons that year. When I asked my dad about the kitchen craziness, and why he let it deviate from his tradition (Jewish law says traditions follow the ways of the husband), he reminded me of another law, one even more important, the home is the domain of the wife and she is its mistress. From the most mundane to the most complex, she is the master. If my Mom wanted to change everything out, it was more than her prerogative, it was her right.
I have been blessed to marry a very wise woman who reminds me regularly that no matter how much I cook, I am a guest in her kitchen. And she is right. I may have build it, be she designed the space from which these wonderful smells and stories arise. I may cook the meal, but she designs the week's menu, tailoring it to our family's crazy schedule and unique and evolving dietary needs. My work nurtures their bodies, but it's her work that nurtures our souls.
I don't want to leave my mother's guidance out here. When I asked why we worked so hard switching things out, especially if we really didn't need to, she answered that we have to work like slaves so that when we finally sit down to the Seder, we can feel free.
She is right. There is nothing so sweet as that first sip of wine on Pesach night, nothing as crisp or fresh as the Karpas tinged as it is with a hint of salt water. And there is genuine joy in the retelling of our story, surrounded by friends and family, laughing and sharing while eating wonderful food.
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