A few years ago looking around the table at everyone settling into their seats at dinner to celebrate Pesach I remember thinking, “this is not at all how it was when I was growing up.”
The week before, my former daughter-in law Whitney and my son Brandon’s fiancé Dyna, spent a Sunday afternoon with me, making matzah balls and baking mandelbroit. At least, we said that’s why we got together, but production was way down the list from laughing and making memories. I always enjoyed the family gatherings at my mother’s house, but I’m sure I never heard the words fun and prepare used in the same sentence.
All of the family members and any other guests invited to my parents’ home for the holidays were white, middle class and Jewish by birth. We didn’t know anyone else.
They all even belonged to the same mainstream Conservative synagogue. No one was “divorssssed,” and there were definitely no single moms. We were inclusive though because we had two adopted cousins.
At our table we were one Jew by choice, a few people who went to a Reform Temple, one Reconstructionist, one Chinese-Canadian, one Filipina, and one divorced and one single mom, both there with their kids. Also in attendance; one shaved head and a pierced tongue.
To my left Whitney, before marrying my son Jonas, was from a lapsed Anglican home. Her single sister, Samantha, and her delicious four-year-old daughter Delilah were sitting next to Ellen, my nephew Mark’s girlfriend, and her two-year-old cherubic son Nathan. To my right, beside my husband Irving on the other side of the table, Dyna, who immigrated from Guangzhou at eight, and then my 92-year-old mother-in-law Bella, Holocaust survivor, and matriarch of the family. Next to her was her Filipina caregiver Lorlie.
Out of the corner of my eye, Marjena, our Polish helper here to keep the kitchen running smoothly, is motioning to me that she’s got everything ready to go.
“Who wants to join me to light the candles?” I invite everyone. Whitney is first up, Delilah – climbing on a chair – is already covering her eyes, and Dyna began reading the prayer from transliteration.
At my parent’s table, it was assumed all the kids my age, especially the male children, would go to university and make the short list of acceptable professions, and if you were female, at least marry one.
When we start dinner and I hear Brandon, the pilot, ask Jonas, the military recruiter/classical trumpet player, to “Pass the horseradish please,” and Dyna, the banker, tells him that Mark, the guitar teacher has it, I think to myself, “I like it so much better this way.”
We serve the soup and I wink at the girls, because it’s time for the much anticipated matzah ball test. “I like them hard,” and “I only like them soft” ping pong back and forth across the table, as we wait for the decision of the 18 judges. Hearing the unanimous declaration of “They’re great,” the girls exhale, and since this was Dyna’s first attempt, under Whitney’s supervision, they’re both pretty pleased.
Because our table configuration is a large rectangle, it’s easy for everyone to be in four conversations at once. The cousins were laughing at something they saw on YouTube, and Nathan is not as interested in eating as much as chirping “Good yontif,” to everyone he can make eye contact with.
At my mother’s house none of this would have been possible, because the long table just kept getting longer, eventually becoming a T or an L depending on how many we were.
When we brought out dessert, the bakers got thumbs up on their three varieties of mandelbroit, especially from Bubbie Bella. “I can’t believe,” she says, “these modern girls can do everything.”
It was a warm night and we all hung out on the deck drinking coffee, until it was time to disperse. When Lorlie starts helping Bubbie on with her sweater, Nathan and Delilah run over and reach up for a hug. Cory and Jamie, two nephews from my side of the family bend down to give her a kiss. “We’ll come and visit this week, Bubbie,” my niece Lindsay tells her, and then a chorus of, “I love you,” from all of her grandchildren including anybody who feels like one.
