The Ghosts of Passover Past

 

Getting ready for Passover this year, Marc and I juggled our time between work and preparing for the holiday. That meant cleaning and organizing and some heavy cooking.

But we didn’t do it alone. I don’t just mean that the two of us worked together; that’s a given. I prepared the pantry for the Passover groceries; Marc cleaned out the refrigerator. Once the kitchen was kosher for Passover, I prepped and brined the half-sour pickles, while he made the orange marmalade. While I baked Passover-appropriate brownies, he assembled the homemade cranberry sauce.

Yet, even when Marc was out running errands or trying to get in a few minutes at his office, I was not alone. Something about the holiday—and preparing for it—makes the presence of loved ones, now of blessed memory, so tangible. Sometimes I feel their presence so strongly, the memories are so vivid, I can almost touch them, feel them, smell them.  For lack of a better description, you might call them my Ghosts of Passovers Past.

We start visiting just after the festival of Purim when I pull out my special Passover notebook. Many of my favorite recipes are written in my mother’s distinctive cursive handwriting with her precious notes in the margins. As I read them, I hear in her voice: “You can use orange marmalade if you want” (I’ll have a lot of that) or “Be careful how much sour salt you put in.”

Some of the recipes, which perfectly capture the mid-century zeitgeist, would never grace my table. But reading the recipe for “Busy Day Fish Bake,” which uses—ugh—gefilte fish from the jar, gives me insights and empathy for what she had to juggle this time of year. Yet, she took enough time away from the family clothing store during Passover to pick up my sisters and me from school before lunch each day, bring us home to a hot meal, and then  drop us back off. What a treat , even if lunch was a casserole of gefilte fish and Passover potato latke mix!  

As I employed my trusty Magic Eraser cleaning pad on the baseboards, I thought of how she and our beloved housekeeper, Earlene,  scrubbed the kitchen in my childhood home until it shone like a new penny.  Earlene, who was considerably shorter than my mother, would wipe down the bottom cabinets—I can still smell the Pine Sol and hear the cloth squeaking across the mauve paint – while my taller mother would stretch to reach the top ones. (Remembering that, I wished, just for a second, that my floors were made of knee-friendly vinyl like those from my childhood instead of solid Cyprus wood)

When I closed my eyes, I could see my mother, her face pink from exertion, pushing an errant strand of damp hair behind the yellow pencil stub resting behind her ear. (She always had one there when she worked at the store but also kept one handy at Passover, in case she needed to add something to her grocery list – usually scribbled on the back of a paper sack or notebook paper I had discarded.)

Earlene, who was a beautiful, full-throated soprano, often would sing to break up the monotony of the task. Appropriately, one of her favorites at Passover was “Go Down, Moses.” When I walked in, she sometimes would begin singing, “A tisket, a tasket…” because she knew “Little Yellow Basket” was one of my favorites. Even as a toddler, I loved singing along, “No, no, no,” which was very apt for a 2-year-old.

Preparing for Passover this year, I laughed a little at myself, quietly singing the song in my can’t-carry-a-tune-in-a-bucket range as I sponged down cabinets.

When the house was clean and I begin to haul out the cookware, I thought again of the past. Gazing at  my mother’s  old frying pan, passed down to me, I pondered why her Passover hamburgers –often cooked in this very pan--were so delectable. She would mix the ground beef with egg and matzoh meal, then season it with whatever she had handy—which could range from paprika to onions to the super-sweet Passover ketchup.  She then fried the burgers until they almost doubled in size. That, with mashed potatoes, is the ultimate Passover comfort meal for me.

Digging further into my Passover cookware and utensils, which have been tucked away and out-of-sight for nearly a year, I pull out a few items previously owned by my Bubbie, bringing on another cascade of memories. I recall how the mahogany table, supplemented by the kitchen table and whatever flat surface was available, stretched nearly the full length of her living room and dining room combined. My grandfather sat proudly at the head of that table, filled with dear relatives--he and so many of them now gone.

Memories flash through my head:  the sweet wine in the burgundy colored glasses; the Haggadot with photos of upside cows, which gave my cousin Holly and me the giggles; the flutter in my stomach when I was asked to read with a table-full of adults looking on, and, finally, the food. After what seemed like an interminable first part of the seder –it usually takes less than an hour, in actuality—nothing tasted better than the hardboiled eggs dipped in saltwater, followed by a mound of gefilte fish drenched in beet red horseradish.

Then there was always a few minutes of escape from the house, as steamy as the bowls of chicken soup served after the gefilte fish. I would sit on the front porch steps with my cousins, enjoying the cool breeze and sucking in the fragrance of early spring blooms in south Georgia. Between the heavy meal and the fresh air, I was a teenager before I could keep my eyes open until the end of the seder .

Also hard to forget were the hour-long rides home in the early morning hours, the Pontiac slicing through the intense darkness of the pine forest-lined two lane blacktop. My sisters and I dozed in the backseat, huddled like baby birds in a vinyl nest, while my mother spoke quietly to my father, making sure he stayed awake for the drive. Usually, preparing for the holiday was stressful for my parents: My father resented the price-gouging by the Passover manufacturers , and my mother was trying to buy enough to feed a family of five for more than a week, while still placating her husband. Maybe it was the wine or the family closeness, but the storm had always passed by the time we were driving home after the seder, and I felt very safe listening to their gentle conversation.

More memories bubbled up a few hours before the seder, when I was mixing the matzoh balls. I could see my  late mother-in-law, Erika, standing in an earlier iteration of this kitchen, stirring together the matzoh meal and oil, then tossing in ginger, her secret ingredient. She would already be dressed for the seder , wearing a necklace , earrings and an apron to protect herself from any greasy splashes. The kitchen would be redolent with the smell of ginger powder mixed with Erika’s cologne.

It’s not really surprising to have these strong memories at Passover, which is all about symbolic food and erasing the barriers between past and present. In some ways, the entire holiday creates a time warp, where the past is now and the present then.

The Haggadah is very clear that the story of the flight from Egypt should be told as if you were actually there. You taste the bitterness of the herbs, feel the mortar-like texture of haroset, partake of the saltiness of tears in the dipping water, all to both empathize with your ancestors and experience the Exodus yourself.

I often talk to my young guests about another way Passover is outside of time. If a Jew from the 15^th or 17^th centuries  dropped into our suburban community the night of the seders, I tell them, nearly everything would be beyond their comprehension – the streets, the houses, the cars. But if they walked into our house, they not only would know exactly what we were doing but would be able to join in.

Even in a very pragmatic way, however, Passover pulls you into the past. Because dishware and utensils last quite a while when they are used only eight days a year, a Passover tool I pull out of a drawer is most likely 20-years-old but also could be 50- or even 80-years-old, passed down from generation to generation. The colander with the star-shaped perforations has been around for Passover my entire life, and even before. The same is true in Marc’s experience; for him, the holiday always has been associated with the red handled utensils, now so chipped that only a few blotches of paint remain.

So, of course, as time folds over on itself, the important people that you’ve lost become somehow more accessible. Maybe it is because I’m older and moving inexorably closer to where they are, but the memories of the departed grow more vivid each year, not less so.

Passover is also very much about the present: My godchildren around the table during the seder, looking and sounding like men and behaving like the mensches they’ve become; the friends with whom we have shared the holiday for a decade or more, looking older yet even more precious to us;  the fun supper we shared with our beloved nieces and great-niece, who now says our names in her soft, sweet voice.

And even about the future: We’ve already begun to discuss plans for next year’s holiday and how to make it even more family-oriented, including those who are still very much alive and those who are only still alive in our memories.