Well, here we are again.  Every year I dread Passover.  I feel it coming with a dark cloud of gloom and perfection pressure building over my head.  Then, I drag myself into the preparation and become an obsessed and driven cleanaholic.   Then the crisis.  I get completely over stimulated, over loaded, overwhelmed and lost in the minutia.  I realize there is no possible way I will accomplish all that I have piled on myself, and I begin to fray.  Well, maybe fray is a nice word for what begins to happen.  It is more like the flopping around a fish does when it is trying to get back into the safety and comfort of the water and desperately running out of air.

So I do what I always do when I am on the ledge.   Oops, I mean edge.  Sorry a little slip there.  It feels like a ledge.  I call my friend Edie.    I think this is my 3rd or 4th year in a row that she has had to give me the Passover speech.   Now she is Christian and does not celebrate Passover.  But I will say that she is the one that helps me find my way back to the meaning of Passover.

Edie: ” Ok we have gone over this before.  Passover is not about  you being the cleanest lady on the block and a total witch to your family.”  (and NO we never use curse words in our conversations.  It is always words like witch and heck)

Edie: “What are your children going to remember about this time?  What do you want them to remember?”

Me:  @%#^%$^%&%&^*((())  (ok maybe I did throw out a few curse words at this point.  I don’t like it when she is right.  and it really relieves pressure)

So I started to let go of my unrealistic expectations and took a couple of deep breaths.  I sat down with my baby and began reading him baby books about Passover.  I started listening to Hannah tell me about how much fun she had going to the Matzah factory.

Then a feeling of peace took root.

I realized that Passover at it’s very core is about LOVE.  It is an amazing love story between God and his people.    What other time in the history of mankind has God shown himself to a PEOPLE?   And it wasn’t a simple miracle that was witnessed by thousands, it was SO MANY!   God really risked himself.  He had to know that before he could even finish showing his glory, we would be working on that golden calf .    He had to know he was rescuing a bunch of doubters.   Yet, he still put all his love for us out there in plain view.   He saved us anyway.

How do you grasp a love like that?  How do you reciprocate a love like that?

God asked Moses who would be the guarantors of this marriage between God and the Jewish People?  We had to promise our children as the guarantors.  So when I look in my children’s faces I realize that what they remember is what matters.  I want them to remember the love.