passover
The first Passover Seder I ever attended was at The Little Red Haired Girl’s parents’ house three years ago. It was the second time I’d ever met her family (parents, sisters, and others), and I was very nervous. Plus I wasn’t sure how I felt about participating in someone else’s religious ritual. It turned out to be a relatively fun evening, except when I found the Afikomen by accident (I tried to discreetly point it out to The Little Red Haired Girl, who promptly announced that I’d found it) and they made me bargain with dad for money. That part I did not enjoy, so now I insist on being the one to hide the Afikomen. Anyway.
The menu consisted of matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, salad, brisket, tsimmus, matzah stuffing, and fruit slices. The Little Red Haired Girl did all the cooking, starting Sunday morning, and everything went off without a hitch. It was pretty torturous to have brisket aroma floating around the house for 36 hours before we were allowed to eat it. The whole meal was delicious, which is lucky since we have leftovers for the month. We also have two open 1.5 liter bottles of red wine leftover, which is or isn’t lucky, depending on how you look at it.
Of the eight of us who were there, I think only three or four of us had ever been to Passover Seder, and only one of us is actually Jewish (The Little Red Haired Girl, of course). Everyone else there (except for me) is some sort of Christian, which I thought was interesting, since Passover is also in the Christian tradition. I think that everyone got into reading the service, and Everything Guy mentioned to me later that he felt it was pretty spiritual.
The disappointing part of the evening came when it was time to find the Afikomen. I had hidden it in the kitchen in an oven mitt, not thinking that people were going to be traipsing in and out of there during the whole meal. Which meant that, by the time people were looking for it, Mischief Man had already noticed it and he retrieved it right away. Poop.
Now that Passover is done, the house is still coated in a thin layer of Matzah dust, and I am still eating gefilte fish for lunch. Wednesday night The Little Red Haired Girl picked me up from rugby practice jonesing for something breaded and fried. I think that next year we should try and do it on a weekend, so people can stay later. Plus, I am going to hide the Afikomen at Everything Guy’s house, since we’ll be neighbors by then.
