Pesach

One of the things I love about Rebecca is that she will make sheets of Matzoh with melted dark and milk chocolate for what has become our annual pilgrimage across the river to Seder dinner on the evening Passover begins, at Phyllis’ home, and that we eat after reading from the Haggadah and partaking of the Seder plate—the bitter herbs (maror and chazeret) that symbolize the bitterness and harshness the Hebrews suffered in Egypt, the charoset, chopped nuts and apples and cinnamon and wine, and the karpas, for us parsley, dipped in salt water to represent tears—that we eat after reading about the Exodus—the story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt, and drinking wine, dipping our fingers in the wine, too, and placing drops of wine on our plates to symbolize the ten plagues, eating Matzoh, and reclining to remind ourselves of the freedom experienced by the Jews, and that follows Ellinore, the youngest child, reading the question, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”, that leads to a series of readings, prayers and questions, and the afikoman, that is hidden, and that Nathaniel and Ellinore must find, with a little help from Phyllis, who has written a poem that carries a clue, and that leads to a gift for the children at the end of the meal.

One of the things I love about Rebecca is that she will get on the Vermonter in Brattleboro, Vermont, a few miles from our house, on the Friday following, after a long week of work, and clickety-clack down the railroad track, arriving at Penn Station in midtown, Manhattan, and walking from the train station through the Flatiron district and the East Village, pausing to listen to the evening vespers at Grace Church, strolling through Soho and Chinatown—and then, still walking, hours later, cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Downtown Brooklyn through Boerem Hill and finally, as the sun is setting, make a left on to Dean Street and, still walking, arrive at Leslie and Douglas’ house to pick up the car we will add to our fleet here at Water Run Farm before, the next day, getting into the car and driving North into the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire.

One of the things I love about Rebecca is the next day, Easter Sunday, near the end of the Pesach, with Bill and Rachel and the girls, when she suggests a post-New-York bagel-breakfast hike up Wantastiquet Mountain, a mere 1335 feet high, to take in the sun and the view of Brattleboro and the Connecticut River Valley, on the last day in March, and then to come back home and make a traditional—though whose tradition, we know not—of pulled pork and pickles and beans, all raised or grown here on the farm, and parathas that Bill brought in, and an astonishing hamburger-shaped cake she picked up the day before in Brooklyn, all the while feeling a wee bit guilty for not attending the morning service at the Chesterfield Unitarian church that we passed on our way to our morning hike.

One other thing I love about Rebecca: her Daughter, Ellinore, and her cousins Nika and Sam, deciding to get in the annual March swim in the pond after all, doing a run around the pond and a few jumps on the trampoline before leaping not once but twice into the cold clear water and then running up into the house to draw a warm bath.