Fight To The Finish

it is 1:00 p.m. on a thursday in the holy city of zefat. i am taking a break from babysitting. gal came back to murse sahar and put him down for a nap. her sister gave birth this morning. poor thing was in labor for over 31 hours.

safta miriam just left the hospital. she went straight to the supermarket to buy the shabbat groceries. hopefully, she'll rest for a while before she goes back to see her daughter. i don't know how she does it. she'll probably make some food for her daughter and son- in- law before she goes back to the hospital. next week, she'll make pesach cleaning as well as care for her new grandson and daughter. remember, the girls go home to sephardi mama for the first month. good luck!

in the meantime, i'm stuck here with sahar. i had him until late afternoon yesterday. i would have had him until 8:00 p.m. but while i was at the small supermarket, she had to make a run to the emergency room. her younger brother apparently, received an elbow to his eye at school. she took sahar to her mother's and her sister watched him. poor safta miriam! one kid in labor and another in the emergency room. thank goodness, they're all okay.

my poor sister is having her apartment refurbished. it's a government apartment and they're redoing the kitchen and bathroom. the apartment is totally, trashed and she's been left without water and a proper toilet for a couple of days. she and her family always used the downstairs apartment for pesach. this year, the kids are living downstairs. i would love to offer her the upstairs studio but there isn't really a proper kitchen there. the large fridge is in the storage area and i don't think we could share a kitchen for pesach.

in a perfect world, i'd invite them and do all the cooking. in that perfect world we'd all have a pesach sedar together. unfortunately, in this world it won't 'fly.' chabadnikim have a set of rituals, all their own for pesach. one cannot phathom their stringencies. as a rule, they will not eat in each others' homes at pesach. my sister will not eat any food that i've prepared in my home. she will get highly insulted if i don't eat her food. figure that out, if you can.

i invited a couple of guests for the sedar. the selling point: being a quick and happy sedar with lots of singing, afterwards. the kids agreed to be here. zvi always made a sedar for my parents. it was always very lively. my father, who suffered from dementia, always got to finish the sedar, too. we don't do all that much talkng and explaining. everyone leaves happy and satisfied. i'm pretty bombed after my first glass of wine. forget about the 4th cup!

i do feel guilty that my family and i won't be together for the holiday. we however, have never really done pesach together. even when they stayed downstairs, we were not together. about 18 years ago, zvi and i finally went to them for a sedar. it was not really to our liking. you could say that it was, pretty much, a disaster.

two years ago, after our mom died, we did do the pesach sedar in my apartment, for the first time in 10 years. my niece and husband were in from india. zvi was not living here then. he went to his in-laws that year for sedar. as it turned out, i developed bells palsey two days before the sedar night. i was drooling and unable to see out of my right eye. i was also, in excrutiating pain after the sedar night. that week remains a blurr.

i haven't done anything today for pesach. i did do the freezer and fridge yesterday. all the glass shelves are still resting on the counters. i need to reassemble them and tape them together again. i do this ritual every year. i offered to do some laundry for my sister. my eye is acting up today. i must rest. in a little while, we are going down to the hospital to see the new baby. that ought to be quite a feat, with sahar along.

next week is going to be really hard with watching sahar and finishing pesach cleaning. i don't know how i am going to finish everything. i have one less floor to do this year. you would think that it should be easier. it's not. in the amount of time that i chase after a toddler, i could have washed the windows, and floors and put away the clothes. i'm more tired after 8-10 hours with sahar, than if i painted the entire house by myself.

by the way, i wish everyone lots of health and lots of energy!!!! only happiness and good news!