Fun With Play-Dough

It’s an interesting concept: the Pope visiting a Synagogue.  I know we should view it as progress, still; it makes me slightly uncomfortable. Probably because I am, I have to admit, a little intolerant of Mister Benedict. (Okay, no Ocean’s 11 jokes, I promise)

Does he know what to do? I’m guessing yes, since he’s supposed to be a fairly intelligent man. I know why he’s coming on Friday night though; no cameras allowed on Shabbos. If he makes a faux pas, it can’t be shown on CNN 1200 times over the next three days.

Pity.

I wonder, what does the Pope himself expect to gain from this visit? Does he expect us all to sigh with relief: The Pope likes us! He really, really likes us!

Doesn’t he know that, at the end of the day, we really don’t care? Or does he expect that he can convert all of us after all? If he does, he’s forgetting one important thing: Jews have it better than Catholics. Oh, I know, that notion insults a lot of people, but it’s true. Just think, we don’t have confession, and we don’t have a big boss telling us that condoms are bad. We also don’t drink the blood and eat the body of Jesus, which, when you think about it, is a bit creepy anyway.

I should be nicer. Fine, I’ll stop.

But I would nonetheless advise the people at Park East Synagogue to watch the Pope real close; don’t let him sneak off by himself. He might try to hide a sandwich somewhere.

P.S. I found out later he visited before sundown. Coward.

Today is the last day I can get anything done; no more “I’ll do this later”, it has to be now.  Never a great way to start the day; I like to do things on my own schedule. Yesterday we took the couch apart and found a toy that my son Mendel ‘borrowed’ from his friend Jack four months ago, and then immediately lost. At least Jack will have a nice Passover surprise. He can ask the four questions wearing his favorite rubber ducky beak.

So what’s left? Walking around like a chicken with my head cut off, that’s what. My son is assisting me with that by taking a crayon and drawing on his table, the wall, and around the fireplace. That’s okay; crayon isn’t Chametz, and I refuse to be too distracted by it. I’m sure there’s a magic eraser somewhere in the house.

Just as I am walking back and forth, trying to get the last details sorted out, I find this on my email:

“The biblical slavery of Egypt represents bondage to your own self.

Every day, every moment, must be an exodus from the self.

If you’re not leaving Egypt, you’re already back there”.

Sounds great. I could certainly use an “exodus from the self”, believe me. Although I have the feeling they don’t exactly mean it like that.  Still, there are many ways to explain the concept of “self”, who’s to say how we give our life meaning beyond the immediate on any given day?

I think one good lesson, during this Passover, might be to focus on how my children are responding to all this. The Passover story is a difficult one, full of hidden trapdoors and dark passageways.  To three-year-old Mendel, it is still a holiday mostly defined by the frog hand puppet he received at his pre-school. It’s not a holiday unless you have special toys. For the past few days, I have been painstakingly explaining the concept of Chametz to him. Sometimes, it seems he almost gets it, but it’s hard during the halfway stage. Most of the house is done, but there’s a few last things left; we can still eat Chametz until tomorrow night, but not in the areas where I already cleaned. Try to explain that to a three-year-old; he listens to me intently, then he says: “I want crackers.”

Okay, fine, but not in the living room. Naturally, that’s exactly where he wants to eat them; no surprise there. I say “no” as firmly as I dare (we don’t want to make this whole deal too punitive) and he agrees to sit in the kitchen with his crackers. But not for long, two minutes later, he gets up and walks into the living room. I send him back to the kitchen where he subsequently dumps them on the floor. Fine, I still need to clean the floor anyway. He wants new crackers, and I give in; we need to get rid of them anyway. Again, he tries to carry them into the living room, again, I send him back to the kitchen. Now he’s tired of it, and leaves them on the counter. “I’ll have juice instead,” he says, and I sigh with relief. Juice, he can drink in the living room. Then he says: “I want cereal.”

I know it’s not nice to ignore your own child, but sometimes they leave you no choice.

Happy Passover, everyone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Xiy5aK3AU&feature=related

Six-year-old Isabella attends Parsha class once a week, so she’s prepared for whatever the weekly Torah portion will be on Saturday.  This is not an easy thing, considering that most adults have a difficult time studying Torah (me, for instance). However, she likes it, and she’s enthusiastic about it; if it really were too hard for her, she’d rebel immediately; she’s good at that.

When the teacher tries to explain Yom Kippur and the meaning of saying you’re sorry, she tells the kids: “Sometimes, people do bad things.”  All kids immediately pay attention; “bad things”, they know all about that. They start yelling examples of very, very bad things; then, my daughter’s hand shoots up: she knows a bad thing too and is eager to share.

 “Yes, Isabella?” the teacher says.

“Like believing in Jesus!”

Oops.

We’ve taught our daughter not to make fun of other kids; they may look different, talk different, have funny last names or a really ugly backpack, and on certain days they may smell a little weird. But making fun of others is perhaps the meanest thing of all, and it’s just not allowed.

Apparently, the lesson didn’t include religious tolerance, but who worries about that when you have a six-year-old? We’re focused on teaching her her own religion and that’s a big enough job; and how does she even know this Jesus? Now what?

I take the coward’s way out and let it slide; frankly, I don’t even know where to begin. Am I remiss when I think she’s too young for this topic?

It’s not as if the concepts of “good” and “bad” are easily explained to begin with; I think they’re right up there with the discussion about where babies come from, and exactly why it is not a good idea to talk to strangers.  On the surface, it seems so easy; when you listen to your parents, that’s good; when you throw your food on the ground because you despise spinach, that’s bad. But the deeper meaning of these terms? Forget it.

What my daughter retains from the day’s lesson becomes clear when she leaves me a letter that night. Apparently, she has been thinking about this bad behavior business on a more personal level after all, because this is what she writes:

Dear Mom, I hate getting in trubal with you. I bet you do to. Love, Isa.

Which almost sounds like an apology. And she didn’t even get in trouble with me today.

My husband, on average, drinks two beers a week. Our recycle people don’t pick up glass (don’t ask…) so we save it; twice a year he drives to the collection site and drops off the empty beer bottles, wine bottles, pickle jars, and light bulbs.  Saving your glass that long means that right now, I feel like a lush; even at the pathetic rate at which we drink, the evidence grows to mythological proportions.

However, I can’t have empty beer bottles during Passover, so this morning I collected four large bags and two boxes worth of glass, which my husband is now driving to the recycle place. I also (yes, yes) sorted through all my children’s toys, and I am happy to say that so far all I found was a handful of stale popcorn that my son was apparently saving for later.

While we save bottles, he saves Chametz: unless you see him eating it, you can never be sure whether the cookie you gave him ended up in his stomach, or is hiding somewhere in a drawer. I guess he wants to make sure I really pay attention while I clean.

Before I start cleaning the fridge, I’ll have to check my list. Every year, there are things I need to be reminded of; usually, when I’m in doubt, the answer is no. Every once in a while, I’m pleasantly surprised. I get to keep my mustard in the fridge, because it’s Kitnyot: you can’t eat it during Passover, because it looks too much like Chametz, so you could get confused; however, you can still have it in your possession. That’s good, because the cabinets where I’m locking things up are getting too full. All the Chametz that’s left needs to be eaten or given away. Luckily, there’s not much.

I leave the dining room for last, so the kids have at least one spot in the house where they can eat without me watching them like I’m the Passover police.

That, of course, is the big danger during these last hectic days, and I have to ask myself: am I making this punitive by whining so much about all the cleaning? Am I making too many jokes about wanting to get out of Egypt? What message am I sending my children; that Passover is a pain in the neck and we are crazy for following all these rules? How can I make this more rewarding for myself, and more fun for my children?  Maybe my lesson this year is that I need to watch my tongue, because my kids are young enough that every word out of my mouth has an impact. So, before they get home from school today, I’m going to pump myself up and pretend that I’m having the time of my life getting this house into shape. Yay.

Even though I don’t think I’ll really feel the joy of Passover until, Saturday night, I’ll be reclining at the Seder, safe in the knowledge everything is done. Still, my children don’t need to know everything.

There are three days left ‘til Passover, and I haven’t accomplished anything today. For weeks, I have been anxiously watching the calendar, making lists in my head of what I need to do.  Now it is almost here, and I haven’t made much progress. I have to be honest; I’m not fond of all this preparation. Cleaning my house from top to bottom, getting every single breadcrumb out of every corner? Cleaning behind the couch? I feel like playing dark, Gothic music in the background. I despise cleaning!

Still, what has to be done, has to be done.

I take a deep breath and make up the balance. So far, I have located and set aside all the Chametz in my kitchen. With the crackers, pasta, granola bars and the like sitting on my kitchen counter, I have a visual reminder of what I want to get rid off. My kids don’t complain even though they’ve eaten macaroni and cheese three nights out of the past five. They know what’s coming; my six-year-old can identify every item in our house that contains Chametz. She even includes the chocolate syrup in her list. Good girl.

I have located the tape with which I will close the cabinets that we shouldn’t have access to, and reminded my husband he needs to finish eating his tortilla wraps.  The form to sell the remaining Chametz, as well as my dishes has been filled out and turned in, and I’ve meticulously scrubbed my Kitchenaid stand mixer before putting it away.

Tomorrow, I plan to tackle the fridge. I will take everything out, scrub until my hands are red, and cover the shelves with aluminum foil.

I don’t really mind cleaning out my kitchen; it means I can temporarily stop thinking about the fact that I still have to do my living room. For some really strange reason, I allow my children to eat dinner in there. In addition, my son eats his breakfast cereal in front of Sesame Street every morning. This means that, in spite of much vacuuming, there are crumbs everywhere; I’ll have to sort through all the toys, and move all the furniture.  Sorting through the toys is my Achilles heel. Toy boxes are strange things. Over the years they get filled with what I have come to think of as “plastic trash”. Little pieces of toys that have broken, Barbie limbs, little balls from who-knows-where, broken crayons, stuff that is unidentifiable, yet will nonetheless be missed by my children if I throw it away. It is simpler to just dump it back into the box, until you really have to clean it out. That moment, I’m sad to say, is now.

Tomorrow morning, my son and daughter are both in school, and thus it’s the perfect time to tackle this particular task.

But I don’t want to.

Which is probably why I’m planning to clean out my fridge.