Two seders and an Easter dinner

Callen and Nell

I was a little under the weather leading up to Friday night, and I thought of not going to the home of my extended family, the Chipkins, for the first seder, but I rallied. We have shared many joyful celebrations and one of the worst nights of our lives. At the seder, someone almost snuck in the name of the Orange Monster (this is a hint regarding that bad night, in 2016,) but a murmur went up in the group to get us back on course. I'm always glad to be with this warm, welcoming family. It's a time of being grateful for many things, and the next day in South Hadley, we were all grateful that Joe took over in the kitchen at our seder after I got things going, because who knows, I might still be serving the potatoes. We have a wonderful tradition: Diane leading a beautiful seder, with contemporary tie-ins, and such must-haves as David's pot roast and Bob's booming baritone version of "Let my People Go." Having Nell and Callen "play" the piano was a joy. Playing with them was a joy. Even being able to get down on the floor and up from it is a joy, and in the theme of the on-and-off 10-year retrospective, here's a post about how I couldn't have done it when I was in the hospital, needing platelets and blood after one of many trips with Joe to the ER. It was a little less than four months after my fourth transplant. I had a fever and was worried about what might be coming down The Pike this time. It turned out to be another fungal ball. I wrote in this post, that after a little walk, "I got dizzy and felt like I might faint. I knew that my blood pressure had fallen. I made it back to my room, and when the nurse took my pressure (standing) it was 65/54. The episode earned me five hours of IV fluids."

Being under the weather now, as compared to then, is obviously no comparison. I've been dragging my feet, literally and figuratively, about doing The Gift of Life 5K in Boston this coming Sunday. Dragging literally, because it's hard to shake off the neuropathy-induced lead boot feeling, and figuratively, because I only signed up today. The Gift of Life is the organization that got me my donor; I signed up for the run last year but at the last minute went to Costa Rica, so when they asked again this year, it seemed like an important thing to do. To make a donation, please click here.

I haven't been running very much and want to get in some little runs before I do it. Yesterday I went a little less than three miles (OK, 2.7), then came back and jumped in the shower so that I could be ready for my next activity, a trip to Framingham for Easter dinner at the home of my Partner/Boyfriend/Honey/Beau's son. Could we take a vote? An Easter egg hunt awaited us. When we got back, we took Maddie for a nice walk.

Today I'm dragging and seem to have neglected the part about finishing the cleanup. Tomorrow is another day...

Earlier in the week, it was AML World Awareness Day, and I wrote about more than 15 years of knowing more than I never wanted to know on the topic.

Memories of my parents

When I was feeling my most intense grief after the death of my first parent – my father – and my editor Marie Grady said to me at work, "They're always with you," I just couldn't believe it.

As the years go by you realize it is of course true, although it is also true that it's never the same.  If we are lucky enough to have good memories, we feel our parents'  presence and we also miss them most at  holidays. A friend said it to me yesterday about Easter. It washed over me at Passover.

A piece on the Lives page of yesterday's New York Times rang true. The author wrote that in the silverware her mother gave her, she saw her mother's hopes and dreams for her future.

My silverware has stayed shiny, covered up in its special drawer by the felt that my mother placed over it. Diane and I have both added some of hers. As she was dying, she said, "Don't give away my silver." When I run out of regular tablespoons, I like to take one from the drawer. I am eating out of a silver spoon, I say to myself. I always put it back and cover it up carefully.

I think of how I channel my mother. For Passover, I put a circle pin on my jacket. "Who do I look like?" I said to Katie and Joe. "Your mother."

Never put a container on the table. Always have flowers: Tulips in the spring. (If not flowers, a bowl of fruit will do, or even a lemon and some cherry tomatoes.) Put candles on the table. If you're not going to use them first, light the wick for a minute. (The white doesn't look good.) Send flowers for anniversaries. I did it for Ben and Meghan yesterday. (One year!) Specify no carnations. (Not classy.)

Yesterday I channeled my father as my neighbor Susan and I walked over to the tennis courts to hit outside for the first time. "I'm going to hit a few," I said to Joe. My father's words. Every so often a breeze picked up. If it was really windy out, my father would say we couldn't complain. "It's an outside game," he'd say.

"Serve 'em up."

Into his eighties, he had a regular tennis game at the courts at Atlantic Beach. I'd wake up to find him eating his breakfast in his tennis whites, long legs stretched out. He would come back grumpy if he had a bad game. (Like father, like daughter.) He would grumble about one particular octogenarian, "He cheats."

He loved hitting with the pro, but he would say, "Never kid yourself about how good you are when you're hitting with the pro." So true. Always makes me laugh.

Easter and Passover

The past few days, I sometimes wished I was back in the Old Country, doing my Passover shopping in New York and replying in kind when people said "Happy Passover."

We live in an area of Western Massachusetts where Jews are few in number. If you go 15 minutes in either direction, to Northampton and Amherst or parts of Springfield and Longmeadow, there are more of us. I am not especially religious, but I do feel that Jewish traditions and culture are important, so I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land around the major holidays. Let's not even get started on Christmas.

Every cashier said, "Happy Easter." Our local supermarket chain, Big Y, had a billboard that wished its customers Happy Easter. They have a small table of Passover goods, so you'd think they would know they have some Jewish customers.

Once during the week, when a cashier said "Happy Easter, " I said, "I celebrate Passover, but Happy Easter to you." I usually just say "you too" to the Easter greeting, but occasionally it doesn't hurt to point out that there is another major holiday. Some people don't seem to know when Passover is, which is odd because the last supper was a seder.

You can feel like a stranger in a strange land, which isn't all bad, because that's what the Jews were when they were slaves in Egypt. The level of our disconnection can't even be compared to what it must have been like for Jews persecuted then or other times, or to what it's like for any persecuted people. But since it's the time for remembering the suffering of our ancestors, our small experience of separateness can maybe give us an entrance into the reading of the Haggadah.

Don't get me wrong: I always liked Easter.

We decorated Easter eggs that my mother put in the window of her Lexington Avenue jewelry store. She got us new pastel-colored dresses that we wore while walking on Fifth Avenue in the "Easter Parade." We had Easter baskets and went on egg hunts in the apartment. That part ended when my parents found out that when the Easter bunny came at night, I lay trembling in my bed due to fear of that large animal bouncing around the apartment.

Anyway, back to the present, after a week of Happy Easters, I felt so good when Springfield's own Gwen Ifill signed off her program "Washington Week" on Friday this way: "Have a blessed Passover and a Happy Easter."

I hope everyone's Easter and Passover celebrations were indeed happy, with many more to come.