Passed Over

I was on my way home from work yesterday when the phone rang. As soon as I saw that it was my parents, indicated by the little pic that appeared on my phone depicting my mother holding my nephew on our living room floor, I knew that seder had been cancelled.

Why else would she be calling me at 4:12pm on Passover?

She reported, in depth, about the frequency of my eldest sister's diarrhea (at least she left out details concerning viscocity and peak flow) and stated that she had been caring for my other delinquent sister's child for over 24 hours straight, and that she and my father weren't feeling well and, well, seder just wasn't going to happen.

This is not the first time that a holiday has been spoiled-- not for us, and not for you-- but, nevertheless, it stung. It's funny, because I can't imagine that anybody was especially sexed up about the idea of spending three hours sitting around my parents' dinner table pretending we were all having a great time in the midst of a thousand things unsaid.

Well, I wasn't especially sexed up about it, at any rate. Nevertheless, the disappointment of the cancellation of the affair was felt keenly. Mostly, if I'm honest, I was dreading coming home and having to tell my wife. I like being the bearer of bad news about as much as I like being the reason for it.

A retired policeman once said that "The New York City Police Departments is the king of disappointing people." My family must be lower lordlings or something in the disappointing people department. I'm not so sure why I'm still continually surprised or even bothered by these cockups and blunders and coincidences that seem so continually and regularly to spoil things around our house, but I am. I suppose it's some infantile, naive hope that "things'll be different this year." And they're always different the next year, and yet it's more of the same.

I certainly don't doubt that my sister is shitting like a faucet, that's not the point. The point is that it's all the missed opportunities and, sorry-how-bout-next-times that have come before this holiday that make this latest insult just one on the heap. On top of everything else. On top of Old Smokey.

All covered with matzah.

Holidays are beginning to give me a bad taste in my mouth, by and large, and I suppose that's part of what getting older is all about. I have this romanticized picture in my mind about what seder used to be like when I was a boy, and I clutch onto that with all the fervor of a night-terrorized child gripping onto his binkie or his bunny. My father commanding the house, making faces at my sister across the table. Reading from the Maxwell House Haggaddah in different accents at the egging on of my family. It was a great time.

At least, I think it was.

Truthfully, I don't know what the fuck my family seder was like in 1987. Or 1989. Or 1992. I don't really remember remember-- I just think I do. And it's that hazy non-recollection that taints whatever comes in its wake-- or, in this case, doesn't.

It's easy to have the present pale in comparison to the past when you're probably making up most of your memories of the past anyway.

This year, it's different. My wife and I, blindsided at the last possible moment, did Passover on our own. We made our own haroset out of apples, chopped up nuts, and pom-whatever juice because we had no sickly-sweet Manichewitz wine in the house. There was matzah-ball soup that we'd made the week before, a hastily-prepared kugel, and dry chicken that I picked up from my parents' house as a consolation prize.

"Just put it in a pan and fry it, Mummy, it'll be great," my father said, handing it to me.

"No, it won't," I said, taking it from him.

See, the thing is, though-- it will. In the end, it will. Because, while I'm not having some big to-do seder with my family like I might have done when I was a boy, I'm having a Jewish-looking/tasting dinner at home with my beautiful, sad wife and, in the end, we're family enough for each other, and forever, too.

Happy Passover.

Mea Culpa, My Bad

As I sit down to write, the sun is setting. Ordinarily, I don't give too much of a shit about this particular, ever day occurance. A couple of weeks ago, though, when my wife and I were vacationing in Maine, we went to the tippy-top of Cadillac Mountain and watched the sun set, and I gave much more of a shit about the sun setting than I had in quite some time.

Tonight, I give a shit about the setting sun because I know it's going to be the last time I'll eat a drop of food until it sets again in twenty-four hours.

Yes, it's Yom Kippur, and I ask your forgiveness.

I know I can be an insensitive, brash bastard and I have an incurably big mouth, and I have no doubt that, at one time or another I've said something in the inglorious archives of this blog, or the last one, that upset you. Maybe I even did it deliberately, because sometimes I can be a spiteful, snarky little bitchwhore. Maybe you were put off by my urging you to rally around the cry of "Keep fucking that chicken." I don't know. I know I pissed some random person off about my post about staying in love. Well, I ask your forgiveness for all the times I've set you off, or made you cry, or that time where you got so incensed at what I'd written that you kicked your poodle down the stairs.

My wife and I atoned for our personal wrongs tonight, and we kissed and we hugged, and that felt really good. I hate having to atone to my wife, because that means that I haven't been the perfect husband, but then, of course I'm not. And she's not the perfect wife. The crumpled tissues I find in between the sofa cushions tell that tale. She told me that, in the true spirit of Yom Kippur, you are not supposed to say, "I'm sorry," you are supposed merely to ask for forgiveness. It's not an easy thing to ask for, like a dime or a piece of Juicy Fruit, but it feels good and humbling and warm to do so. You should try it, at the risk of sounding like your rabbi. Or your mother.

Sometimes I think that my heart will fall apart if I think too much about all the rotten things that are littered through the past of my life, even the very recent past. There aren't so many misdeeds, just mostly bad words. My tongue is sharp and cruel when it has to be, and sometimes when it wants to be, and it has always been my primary means of defense. And offense.

Yom Kippur can be dangerous if you really let it get to you. Your mind can take you to all kinds of unpleasant places, if you let it. Not only will you start to get extremely sad by thinking about all the people whom you've wronged, upset and angered over the past year, but you'll also inevitably start amassing negative thoughts about all the deedledicks and whorebuckets who have hurt you, too. And then it starts getting all cyclical and negative and just plain bad. Yom Kippur, if well observed, though, can be like flushing the toilet after a violent, vitriolic shit. It's pretty fucking cleansing. It's Roto-Rooter for the Jewish Soul.

There a certain person out there to whom I should be asking forgiveness, but I won't be. I wonder how God feels about that, if He notices at all. My boss randomly asked me if I believe in God and I just stared at her. I suppose, if I do believe in God, I believe in a God who thinks you're a shit for not asking forgiveness from your former best friend, and loves you anyway. I believe in a God who looks at streaming web porn, too. I believe in a God reads blogs, because they're funny and inconsequential and mean and sometimes better than the newspaper columns. I believe in a God who thinks it's okay to sit on your ass watching TV and be sad on a rainy afternoon, even when the rest of the street is out mowing their lawns and trimming their hedges. I believe in a God who knows that Yom Kippur is better in principle than in reality, but fasts anyway.

I believe in a God who wears a shirt and tie on Sunday, even if he has no place at all to go.

I also believe in asking for forgiveness, even though it's hard and messy.

I hope God can forgive me for not asking for forgiveness from my friend. He probably will. After all, He created humans, and nobody knows how fallible and petty, stubborn and stupid they are more than He does.