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Whoosh because the point at which I realized I had better head for home (circa 7 p.m. [1]) was when I almost knocked my aunt's silver Passover sugar bowl--which was her parents' and is older than I am--onto the floor.
There were ten of us: my aunt Lea and her husband Dave, my aunt's daughter Anne, my cousin Janet (who led the seder, though it was held at my aunt's home), Janet's parents (Ruth and Hank), me, two old friends of the family, Edy and Frieda (who had a brief, cheerful argument about which had known the family longer: both have claims from well before I was born), and Janet's friend Sue. Sue had never been to a seder before, so along with the food and the standard ritual-cum-explanation, we provided periodic footnotes. I have no intention of doing so: find any Haggadah if you're curious and don't already know.
This was an interesting mix of family tradition--for example, the specific Passover dishes used are long familiar to all the Kanners [2], and we're used to singing together out of tune--and changes, like smart-ass remarks about some bits of the Haggadah. There are pieces that really felt as though someone had had a thesaurus open when composing them. There's a page that uses the word "thine" about eighty times. This particular Haggadah (supplied, by long family tradition, by Maxwell House Coffee) was, also, clearly written by someone who had a vague acquaintance with King James Bible style English, but couldn't hang onto it long enough to decide what verb forms go with "Thou."
But I got to let Elijah in (because I asked to) and I hid the afikoman (at a point when Janet wasn't paying attention, so that when it came time to search for it, she said "I'm going to have to hide the afikoman", I said she wouldn't, and she then got up, looked for it, and offered a virtual Timex watch for its return, which I cheerfully accepted. My mother called while we were eating the "festive meal" (which is fair enough: anything with matzo ball soup, haroseth, and good tsimmes is welcome to be a festive meal in my universe), and several of us talked to her. Lea and I also were the only two people to sing "A-deer Hu" [3]. We both enjoyed ourselves, nobody else grimaced visibly, and Lea thanked me when we got to the end of the song.
In the course of the seder, I found that somewhere along the way, I've started liking horseradish. So I ate lots and lots of horseradish-and-haroseth (mostly haroseth, but I used to omit the horseradish entirely), and skipped the gefilte fish.
Several of my charming relatives greeted me with variations on "What happened to your hair?" So I told them.
Janet filled in a bit of family gossip I hadn't known: we found out shortly before my mother's cousin Rachel died [4] that she had, for many years, been carrying on a secret affair with a man who she had dated when she was in high school, before her parents broke up the romance because they thought he didn't have good prospects. Secret because he was still married (she had been divorced twice), though the strong suspicion is that his wife must have at least suspected something [5]. At Rachel's funeral, Gerd gave, I am told, an excellent eulogy, one that sounded enough like a novel that Janet asked him if she could have a copy. She gave him her work phone number, and they agreed to meet so he could give her said copy and ask her some questions about Rachel. In the course of the conversation, he told her what she described as "more than [she] needed to know" about his and Rachel's personal/sex life. Then he started coming on to her. She deflected him, got out of there, and didn't return his future phone calls. She also told my aunt Lea, who was duly shocked.
A couple of years later, Janet told this story to Rachel's daughter Sara. Sara, in return, told Janet that he had done the same to her. "Duly shocked" doesn't cover it: not only is there a significant difference between making a pass at your deceased lover's cousin-once-removed and at said lover's daughter, but an unsavory pattern starts to emerge.
Edy, hearing this, came up with an idea none of the rest of us had thought of: how do we know Gerd was really married? It would have been difficult for him to hide twice-a-week meetings over many years from someone he lived with (how many out-of-town meetings and tennis lessons can a person have?), but "I'm sorry, I have to go home to my wife" is not an excuse someone is likely to question the truth of.
Just for added weirdness, as I was walking home from the A train, thinking fond thoughts of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cattitude, ibuprofen, and the bathroom, someone sitting on a bench asked if I had the time. I told him it was about 10 after 8. He thanked me, and asked whether I knew about Einstein's theory of relativity. I said "Not much, I'm afraid" [6]--in some other mood, I'd have happily discussed theoretical physics with a random stranger, but I just wanted to get home. As I was walking away, the man shouted "He was one of the smartest people in the world", which is probably true and almost certainly irrelevant.
[1] You may argue this with my aunt and uncle who can't or won't drive at night; I'm not going to bother.
[2] None of us are actually named Kanner: my grandparents Kanner had three daughters, all of whom changed their names when they married.
[3] I have no idea of what that means: I was going by memory and following my aunt for the tune, and what I couldn't remember of the words are in the haggadah phonetically.
[4] Lea said, quite sincerely, that Rachel had "died young": Rachel was in her late 60s when she died.
[5] I refrained from saying out loud that I much prefer the way my friends do these things.
[6] A defensible statement--I don't really have the math--though I'm reasonably familiar with such of it as can be explained and understood without going through the equations oneself.
There were ten of us: my aunt Lea and her husband Dave, my aunt's daughter Anne, my cousin Janet (who led the seder, though it was held at my aunt's home), Janet's parents (Ruth and Hank), me, two old friends of the family, Edy and Frieda (who had a brief, cheerful argument about which had known the family longer: both have claims from well before I was born), and Janet's friend Sue. Sue had never been to a seder before, so along with the food and the standard ritual-cum-explanation, we provided periodic footnotes. I have no intention of doing so: find any Haggadah if you're curious and don't already know.
This was an interesting mix of family tradition--for example, the specific Passover dishes used are long familiar to all the Kanners [2], and we're used to singing together out of tune--and changes, like smart-ass remarks about some bits of the Haggadah. There are pieces that really felt as though someone had had a thesaurus open when composing them. There's a page that uses the word "thine" about eighty times. This particular Haggadah (supplied, by long family tradition, by Maxwell House Coffee) was, also, clearly written by someone who had a vague acquaintance with King James Bible style English, but couldn't hang onto it long enough to decide what verb forms go with "Thou."
But I got to let Elijah in (because I asked to) and I hid the afikoman (at a point when Janet wasn't paying attention, so that when it came time to search for it, she said "I'm going to have to hide the afikoman", I said she wouldn't, and she then got up, looked for it, and offered a virtual Timex watch for its return, which I cheerfully accepted. My mother called while we were eating the "festive meal" (which is fair enough: anything with matzo ball soup, haroseth, and good tsimmes is welcome to be a festive meal in my universe), and several of us talked to her. Lea and I also were the only two people to sing "A-deer Hu" [3]. We both enjoyed ourselves, nobody else grimaced visibly, and Lea thanked me when we got to the end of the song.
In the course of the seder, I found that somewhere along the way, I've started liking horseradish. So I ate lots and lots of horseradish-and-haroseth (mostly haroseth, but I used to omit the horseradish entirely), and skipped the gefilte fish.
Several of my charming relatives greeted me with variations on "What happened to your hair?" So I told them.
Janet filled in a bit of family gossip I hadn't known: we found out shortly before my mother's cousin Rachel died [4] that she had, for many years, been carrying on a secret affair with a man who she had dated when she was in high school, before her parents broke up the romance because they thought he didn't have good prospects. Secret because he was still married (she had been divorced twice), though the strong suspicion is that his wife must have at least suspected something [5]. At Rachel's funeral, Gerd gave, I am told, an excellent eulogy, one that sounded enough like a novel that Janet asked him if she could have a copy. She gave him her work phone number, and they agreed to meet so he could give her said copy and ask her some questions about Rachel. In the course of the conversation, he told her what she described as "more than [she] needed to know" about his and Rachel's personal/sex life. Then he started coming on to her. She deflected him, got out of there, and didn't return his future phone calls. She also told my aunt Lea, who was duly shocked.
A couple of years later, Janet told this story to Rachel's daughter Sara. Sara, in return, told Janet that he had done the same to her. "Duly shocked" doesn't cover it: not only is there a significant difference between making a pass at your deceased lover's cousin-once-removed and at said lover's daughter, but an unsavory pattern starts to emerge.
Edy, hearing this, came up with an idea none of the rest of us had thought of: how do we know Gerd was really married? It would have been difficult for him to hide twice-a-week meetings over many years from someone he lived with (how many out-of-town meetings and tennis lessons can a person have?), but "I'm sorry, I have to go home to my wife" is not an excuse someone is likely to question the truth of.
Just for added weirdness, as I was walking home from the A train, thinking fond thoughts of
cattitude, ibuprofen, and the bathroom, someone sitting on a bench asked if I had the time. I told him it was about 10 after 8. He thanked me, and asked whether I knew about Einstein's theory of relativity. I said "Not much, I'm afraid" [6]--in some other mood, I'd have happily discussed theoretical physics with a random stranger, but I just wanted to get home. As I was walking away, the man shouted "He was one of the smartest people in the world", which is probably true and almost certainly irrelevant.[1] You may argue this with my aunt and uncle who can't or won't drive at night; I'm not going to bother.
[2] None of us are actually named Kanner: my grandparents Kanner had three daughters, all of whom changed their names when they married.
[3] I have no idea of what that means: I was going by memory and following my aunt for the tune, and what I couldn't remember of the words are in the haggadah phonetically.
[4] Lea said, quite sincerely, that Rachel had "died young": Rachel was in her late 60s when she died.
[5] I refrained from saying out loud that I much prefer the way my friends do these things.
[6] A defensible statement--I don't really have the math--though I'm reasonably familiar with such of it as can be explained and understood without going through the equations oneself.