Being that mom is not very religious and way more into the ritual’s of Jewish events, she thought that it would be fun to have an abridged Seder that included all the fun parts that she enjoyed as a kid.
That included remembering the 10 plagues, eating the charoset, looking at the Seder plate and the main event of any Seder finding the aficoman.
(that is the matzo that is hidden for the children to find at the end of the meal. Once that Matzo is found the child that finds it gets a prize that is usually money and candy.)
When she was little all mom could think about was being to winner, growing up around all boys this was the time when size did not matter. You did not have to be big to find something, you just had to be smart and agile.
Mom usually spent the whole day shadowing her father’s every move trying to figure out his thought process and trying to catch him hiding the matza.
Mom’s father was the best at hiding the aficoman, he hid it so well that by the end of the search he had to give so many hints just to keep everyone looking in the same room. In mom’s old house there were so many rooms and great possible hiding places that the game had to start off with many ground rules. Such as, it’s downstairs, not in closets and not in the kitchen.
Mom’s dad would just keep sitting at the table as 4 children tour around the house trying to be the big winner. Half an hour later they would come screaming back to him for more hints, and he would make them all really work for it.
Finally when they all got down to one possible room where it might be, everyone had to be very wise about how they would search because all of them knew that their mom would kill them if they messed anything up.
Usually one child would grow tired of searching first and whine about how this game was dumb, but secretly have one eye open on each place the other children searched.
Another child would usually get mad and start pushing others around and banging things because their level of frustration was so high, and since they were the biggest they must be the one to find it.
The other two would go back and forth literally on top of one another searching hoping that whom ever eyed it first the other one would have the faster hand to grab it and bring it back to the table.
Every year mom did not win and every year she swore to herself that the next year she would win, she lived in the house, she thought like her father, and she was or so she thought smarter at searching.
The one child that did win would spend all of dessert gloating and making the others mad, palming the $40 that was just won.
That’s Passover to mom, you spend the who meal drinking wine, eating matzo, listening to your dad make puns out of the hagada that you had to read, seeing who could read the text funnier. And joking about Moses and the burning bush, and picturing a man with a red fire crotch.
Lounging at the table, thinking about how you are going to find the aficoman this year.
Mom took all that and abridged it in to 12, 20 something’s packed in to her small one bedroom apartment drinking and eating meatloaf muffins and plague cake,
searching for a box of Matzo meal, because Kris did not know to get real matzo.
This year mom though about where to hide the matzo for a couple of days, she ended up at the last minute having to switch her hiding place to accommodate the matzo meal box, she started off the game the same way with ground rules, and then held her breath while people rummaged through her stuff, she would drop hints and smile at Frank when someone got really close.
Jeremy ended up finding it this year, wining the candy and the money. Mom was proud that everyone seemed into it and played along.
This Passover was fantastic and really celebrated their small want for the old rituals to mix with their new ones, and the fact that there was good food, good friends and good wine did not hurt either!
Cheers to being a little bit Jewish and having great friends and family to create new family traditions with!
