Being Mama on Pesach

I miss my mother most of all during the week before Passover. Mama schlepping the dishes she packed in boxes to store away for the eight days; Mama unpacking the 4 sets of Pesadich dishes (the dairy for everyday and the one for the Seder; the same for the flaisech set), the two sets of pots and pans (dairy/milchek and meat/flaisheke);Mama sweeping and wiping away every crumb of chametz as she stored the rest, lined the cabinet, refrigerator, and counters with plastic so no chametz would touch our food for Passover; Mama cooking chicken soup, making the charoset, grating the horseradish, Mama the quintessence of this holiday.

The last Seder in her own home was catered. I hired the only Kosher caterer in town, and our wonderful cleaning woman (Mama’s also) to help unpack the Passover dishes, set up and clean in the no longer lived in house in SW Portland. Dad by then was at Robison debilitated by Parkinson’s. Mama was living at Rose Schnitzer Manor paralyzed on her left side by a stroke. But both of them sat at the Seder table in their own home with all their children and grandchildren. 

It was at a Seder at Robison Jewish Home 9 years after Daddy had died, I knew it would be my mother’s last.  Mama couldn’t make it past the first half of the abbreviated large group Seder. Since she asked to go to bed, leaving this holiday she loved, I knew she was leaving us.

And so I bring her to me in making the kitchen chametz free, in making chicken soup with kneidlach, in lighting the holiday candles and sitting at our very large family Seder. Pearl Lipkin thank you for the blessing of your life.