I met my
late husband Roy in 1990, and for these past 25 years, more or less, I have
enjoyed spending the Seder with his closest friends and their families. Seder happens at Howard and Carol’s home, on
Euclid Avenue in the Berkeley hills. We
arrive between 5 and 5:30, Earl and Beverly from Mill Valley, Jeff and Julie from
Davis, me from San Francisco, and Sheldon and Nikki now transplanted to
Bethesda MD. The next generation, and even
the next-next generation, come too.
Roy has
been dead almost 18 years, Annie is asunder, and this year I arrive alone. All the other marriages and children are intact,
as is the bond I feel for all of them.
Sitting
around an enormous ring of beautifully set tables, we make it through the Haggadah,
followed by a feast that Carol has prepared, each year’s matzo ball soup
smoother and more delectable than the last.
Each of us has contributed a dish of spring bounty – perfectly cooked
asparagus with a lemony sauce, salads with edible flowers, rhubarb
crumble. The sung Dayenu is so off-key
that I tear up in laughter. Every year,
it is the same.
I slip into
the kitchen to help keep up with the rounds of dirty dishes, and that’s where
the real conversation happens, especially with Carol, Nikki, and Julie, whom I
rarely see. I don’t realize my
loneliness until I am home again, and it makes being with them all the sweeter.
Until next year…
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