Holidays, holy days, and just those other kinds of days

[beetiger]

Thursday night I did the same thing I’ve done as my major Passover celebration, and also one of my major pieces of service to the Unitarian Universalist community to which I belong – I ran their annual Seder. I’ve got the thing down pat by now. The shopping list is all written out, and I know where in the party store to find the blue plates and the silver candles and the plastic wine glasses. I know which wine store near me carries both half-decent Kosher Merlots and the big square jugs of Maneschewitz Concord Grape without which for some folks you just can’t have the holiday. I know how to construct the matzo ball soup so it doesn’t spill in my car on the way. And I know, that even in the years which end up with sixty people at the table, no one will tell me they are coming more than two days in advance. We were only about 18 this year – the fact that we had to do it on the second night, not the third, so as to stay out of the way of Good Friday for this multicultural community, and that school Spring Break had already swept away many of the families made it smaller, but still very nice. It’s the family I celebrate with, these days. I think my family is confused about why, if I want to celebrate the Seder, I don’t go do it with Jews. But this is where I’m needed.

I kind of missed Easter entirely, spending Sunday morning collecting lediva from LaGuardia for a sneak visit on the way home from her family. I got to hear that the tough discussions she had with her parents about me went better than expected, I ate a chocolate carrot that looked like an umbrella, and I got some of the physical and emotional reconnection I was craving from her. I made potato latkes for dinner and declined to eat half of a hot cross bun.

sythyry and I are missing our coven’s Beltane celebration this year, going instead to be Gaming Guests of Honor at Jersey Devil Con. It’s our anniversary weekend, too, of course, so we will spend it honoring our love by terrorizing people with bands of marauding monsters. Seems about right to me.