Sunday, April 20, 2008

...we all left the table full.


We spent days in the preparation!
It was a dear, tender, sweet time. Xan wanted to know my secrets. The one's that a mother passes down to her daughter.
We started with lists. Many lists.
Lists of what we needed for the table.
Then lists of the recipes.
Then lists of ingredients.
Then lists of what we would make each day.
(Jane is proud, this I know)
We started with a whole chicken and worked into grating an orange. In perfect sync we were melting Trader Joe's bittersweet chocolate, boiling eggs, and chopping vegetables. We washed dishes, filled the dish rack, emptied the dish rack and washed dishes again.
I, mother, sharing with Xan, daughter, my years of kitchen experience. It was ancestral. She wanted to know all that I had to share. It was magical.
Women bonding over food.
It's who we are.
The givers of nourishment.
And this is what it was all for.For our Passover Seder dinner.
There is no other holiday that we celebrate where I feel closer to God. Really. I'm not even a Jew. But I love this holiday with a fervor.
We gathered, read the Hagadah (a version which Michael and a friend wrote for the UU Seders that we used to host), ate the ritual food, drank the wine and Rebekah lead a discussion of what people around the table have down to help create freedom in the world.
With food like this to nourish our taste budsand the ritual of Seder to nourish our souls we all left the table full.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely. I bet the conversation was as delicious as the food.

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