I kind of adoire it when the most convenient Saturday for our own peculiar seder falls on Easter weekend. Usually that means that the eggs you eat together are dyed (not this year though). But it's just kind of nice to have one long weekend of this kind of thing. For some reason even though the seder is a tremendous amount of work it's not as stressful as the other holidays.
I've been having kind of a miserable time, finding it difficult to do much of anything, really envious of the kids who have found the path of overwork. I'd like something to show for this crap, actually. The seder could have been a minefield. No Ted and no Frank (from whom I had not heard in days, which worried me a lot, though I now know he's safe at least for now, just having gmail troubles)which meant no remarks about Paul Bunyan and Godzilla and Hillel or whatever (I don't remember the lines, just the tune), and a big chunk of boisterousness just not there. I didn't really notice it till today, though, in looking back over it, because we had Emma's friend Kathleen and her mother Marianne, and the hole was filled by Marianne's gracious curiosity and enthusiasm. I'm really grateful, in retrospect, to have had her there.
I keep seeing signs of improvement -- tasks accomplished, a single phone call made, or like tonight a desire to listen to music as I write -- and I think okay, I'm going to be a real human being again, and then I have a day when I can't leave the house and everything I look at fills me with dread. And naturally, the crisis day, the day I finally determined I had to get grief counseling -- that was the day when they cut the cables and I could only call in a short radius around my house and I couldn't use the internet at all, so I couldn't talk to the insurance company.
I'm taking a risk writing this, because Emma reads the journal and it's always a danger that I might inspire her to worry too much about me, but hey, Emma, look, this is, according to what I've read and heard, about par for the course, and I'm going to do what it takes to live through this, okay? Crisis does not equal emergency.
Oh, yeah: I brought matzoh and charoses (not my best, but still good), and my sister-in-law brought tsoureki, greek sweet bread with red eggs and ground sour cherry pits in it, and that's somehow profound to me.
I've been having kind of a miserable time, finding it difficult to do much of anything, really envious of the kids who have found the path of overwork. I'd like something to show for this crap, actually. The seder could have been a minefield. No Ted and no Frank (from whom I had not heard in days, which worried me a lot, though I now know he's safe at least for now, just having gmail troubles)which meant no remarks about Paul Bunyan and Godzilla and Hillel or whatever (I don't remember the lines, just the tune), and a big chunk of boisterousness just not there. I didn't really notice it till today, though, in looking back over it, because we had Emma's friend Kathleen and her mother Marianne, and the hole was filled by Marianne's gracious curiosity and enthusiasm. I'm really grateful, in retrospect, to have had her there.
I keep seeing signs of improvement -- tasks accomplished, a single phone call made, or like tonight a desire to listen to music as I write -- and I think okay, I'm going to be a real human being again, and then I have a day when I can't leave the house and everything I look at fills me with dread. And naturally, the crisis day, the day I finally determined I had to get grief counseling -- that was the day when they cut the cables and I could only call in a short radius around my house and I couldn't use the internet at all, so I couldn't talk to the insurance company.
I'm taking a risk writing this, because Emma reads the journal and it's always a danger that I might inspire her to worry too much about me, but hey, Emma, look, this is, according to what I've read and heard, about par for the course, and I'm going to do what it takes to live through this, okay? Crisis does not equal emergency.
Oh, yeah: I brought matzoh and charoses (not my best, but still good), and my sister-in-law brought tsoureki, greek sweet bread with red eggs and ground sour cherry pits in it, and that's somehow profound to me.