Passing The Torch on Passover | by Helen Kohl | Canada

Passing the torch on Passover | By HELEN KOHL | Canada

Image by Jeff Cushner via Flickr

Passing the torch on Passover

When I was growing up, we gathered at my parents place for one seder, my Aunt and Uncle’s place for the other.

Dinner at Rose & Sam’s with my grandparents as guests, then dinner at Toby and Aby’s.

My parents worked all the time and so did Toby and Aby. These were rare nights to spend together as a family. Hang out with my cousins. Eat my mom‘s homemade gefilte fish. Bit into my aunt’s lovingly crafted, heavy matzoh balls. Avoid the storebought Passover macaroons. (Everyone throws those out at the end of the holiday. Just saying.)

I guess we never thought that Passover would be anything other than a meal at Rose and Sam’s one year, then Toby and Aby’s the following year.

It was the first place I drank wine, the first place I saw one of my sisters get drunk, and the first place I heard my Dad’s response when someone spills wine on a white tablecloth – “now it’s a party!”

Then Aby got sick and, far far too soon, died. My grandparents passed on as well.

But of course Passover went on. My parents still held the fort at their place, and we still ate the same traditional food. Together.

Eventually my sisters and I and my cousins all got married. Our children joined the feast. The Passover Seder became a lively event, with children vying for the right to sing the Four Questions. For years, Chris and I would take turns to eat the meal – one would load a plate for the other and feed a kid, the other would eat, and vice versa.

About 15 years ago, my Mom started getting forgetful. It was the beginning of her long and slow decline into Alzheimer’s. One night, Chris and I and the kids went over for dinner. My Mom had spent all day making two chicken breasts, for all six of us. She knew there was something wrong, but hadn’t allowed my Dad to help her or prepare more food. We scrounged for snacks to fill up the kids. But we knew it was the last meal, cooked by my beautiful mother, that we’d ever eat at her table.

Before she died, I managed to get her recipe for Gefilte fish. We spent an afternoon together making it, according to her instructions. Her kugel, her chicken with pineapple, her Passover honeycake – they’re gone forever now. I thought I had more time. I was wrong.

The next year, my sisters, aunt and I divvied up the cooking. Among the four of us, we’d decide whose house to go for the first night and whose house the second night. Our parents joined us, as guests.

My Mom died two years ago, so there’s one less face at the table.

And in the years since then, we’ve developed our own recipes. I haven’t yet made my Mom’s gefilte fish because my Dad buys it – it’s his one contribution to the meal and we don’t want to deprive him of it. My specialty is Passover peanut butter cookies and brownies. My sisters make amazing meatballs and one niece does a mean vegetable dish.

My Dad is an honoured guest. And all of the children are young adults who bring along friends and companions to read the Hagaddah, sing the songs and join the discussion.

It’s as though we’ve all moved over one. The holiday continues as it always will.