Enough

Happy Good Friday everyone!  This might be the first time that I've ever said those words, mostly because I'm Jewish and I'm still unclear why the day that someone who everyone seemed to really like died is known as a good day.

Also because in "normal life" on Good Friday (and the following Monday) there would be no school and that would mean a four day weekend and that would mean figuring out how to entertain three kids for four days. Which now sounds like The Dream, but last year meant  figuring out how to avoid ending up at The IX Indoor Amusement Park on Easter Sunday feeling exposed because I'm not wearing a dark brown wig and knee length jean skirt.
 
However, wrapping up week #4 of the Coronavirus Quarantine, I have vowed to never ever complain about a four day weekend again. I will take my kids to any indoor play space, amusement park, or germ infested gymnasium as soon as they are declared safe by the Ohio Department of Health.

I know that's an odd takeaway from a pandemic but I'm kind of at the end of my rope. I've played every board game twice. I've cleaned out every closet and cabinet.  I've chalked the driveway, baked cookies, put together two puzzles and watched the classic 80's movies Major League, The Karate Kid and Top Gun with my kids. My six year old is now familiar with the expression "suck my dick" (thanks Wild Thing) and my 11 year-old probably thinks there will be a lot of tongue and Take My Breath Away will be blasting in the background the first time he kisses a girl. 

So why then is it a good Good Friday? Well, it is because in addition to not going to school because of the pandemic, Good Friday means there is NO ONLINE LEARNING. No online learning means no scrambling to look presentable in case I wander into the background of a Google Meet that my third grader is having with his teacher. No online learning means no admitting to my sixth grader that the math he is doing is so far over my head it might as well be astronomy.  It means not having to ask Alexa whether Iran is a theocracy or a dictatorship (her answer: yes) or wonder why they don't teach phonics the way they did when I was learning to read.

I'm pretty sure this is not what Jesus intended when he was crucified, but today I, for one, feel saved AF.

Speaking of religion, this past week my family celebrated Passover. And like most modern Jewish families around the world, or at least those who are on my facebook feed, we shunned the idea of celebrating seder with our small-ish nuclear families, opting instead to employ the technology of today and do a Zoom seder with my husband's extended family. This may have been the first time ever at a Jewish holiday that the words "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" have been asked.

We might be chosen, but we are not particularly quiet.

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that celebrating Passover during COVID-19 was an experience we will never forget, and brought up a lot of weird emotions.

For one thing, the ten plagues felt disturbingly real. And not just because  when the clouds passed in front of the supermoon this week it looked freakishly like the Angel of Death in the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments.

My eleven year old landed on Boardwalk where his six year old brother had two hotels so there was blood.

The storms Tuesday and Thursday brought hail and also darkness when many of my friends' houses lost power. And I know you're probably thinking "but didn't they have flashlights and also it's spring so it stays light until at least seven thirty!" But you forget about the other things that we rely on electricity for. Things got dark real fast when the internet was out and iphones couldn't be charged.

I found two stink bugs in my bathroom (is it weird that my first reaction was to be excited to see new faces?) and also had two huge pimples from binging on dark chocolate so there's pestilence and boils.

I don't have a frog problem but I do have a dog that loves to sit in puddles of mud and then jump into my bed so the only plague that we seemed to be missing was the death of wild beasts, but one of the three eleven year olds at our seder read that plague as "wild breasts" and I can attest to the fact that with little reason to wear a bra there are a lot of breasts out there that aren't looking particularly...alive.

Also, although we are technically "free", we are all feeling a little imprisoned these days by the stay at home order we are under. I for one feel like a slave...mainly to the kitchen where I have been toiling away for four weeks under inhumane conditions - namely having to cook for three picky eaters and a vegetarian.

And yet, we know that we don't have it that bad. As I brought up in a previous post, my husband's grandparents are Holocaust survivors. This was also brought up at least five times during our seder.

We know that we are going through right now pales in comparison to hiding in the woods, scavenging for food and being exposed to the elements for four years.

We know that there are people not far from where we live who are suffering from the food insecurity and income insecurity brought on by the economic destruction that is a side effect of this virus.

If there's one thing we know from being Jewish, it's guilt trips, and the feeling of "I'm miserable, but it could be so much worse so really who am I to complain?"

Self-inflicted guilt is the worst kind of guilt. It's also the most Jewish.

Which brings me to Dayenu, my favorite part of the Seder and the part that this year spoke to me the most. Dayenu means enough, and the way it's used in the Seder roughly translates into us Jews letting God know that if he had only done a little bit to help the plight of our enslaved ancestors it would have been enough. Even the smallest miracle would have been cool.  "I mean, you could have just set us free, you didn't have to freaking kill their first born! God."

Because as a people we don't really know how to just say "Thank You" and leave it at that.

So I have tried to compile my own personal Dayenu for this year.

If I only had a house with heat and electricity and not also wifi and high speed internet, dayenu.

If I only had Netflix and not also HBO, Hulu, Prime and Disney+, dayenu.

If I only had one pair of sweatpants (OK, make that two, I'm not an animal), dayenu

If I only had Instagram Live for working out and not also access to one of my friend's Beachbody On Demand account, dayenu.

If I only was able to group text my friends 500 times a day and not also see them on group Face Time, House Party and Zoom, dayenu.

If I was only able to watch Fox News....OK, forget it, there's no reality in which fake news is OK. That is where I draw the line.

Which brings me back to seder.  One of the best parts about our Zoom seder was the mute button.  I'm sure when Moses was wandering in the desert he wished he had had one. He probably would have reached The Promised Land a hell of a lot quicker without Miriam and Aaron always trying to give him their opinion on which camel to follow, what mountain to climb and whether the burning bush was an expression of feminine power or the result of global warming.

I had been worried that my kids would be disappointed that they weren't with their cousins and that Passover wouldn't be special this year. I also wasn't sure how much of an "event" to make of the whole affair. Do I break out the good china and make everyone get dressed up like we were expecting more than just an invisible prophet to show up for dinner? Or do I want them to actually have good memories?  I am raising boys, after all. All they needed was a very spirited game of "Find the Afikomen" (if you are not Jewish and don't know what this is, I promise you it's not as dirty as it sounds) for my eleven year old to tell me that "that was the best Seder ever." 

So now we head into Easter weekend with a refrigerator full of leftover matzoh balls because I don't think a recipe for matzoh ball soup has ever been made with the intention of only feeding five people. My children's commitment to following the dietary restrictions of the holiday is commendable, and will definitely be tested tomorrow morning when their breakfast options are matzoh and butter or matzoh and peanut butter because I have gone through 18 eggs in two days and I am limiting my COVID-19 exposure (i.e the grocery store) to one day a week. I don't know if our current situation is going to last two more weeks or two more months, but considering I just yelled "I can stir my own tea, dammit!!!!" at my six year old I'm pretty sure my sanity can't take the latter.

But honestly, knowing that a holiday having to do with a Bunny and chocolate eggs on Sunday means that I get another online learning vacation on Monday, for now that will be enough.