Prepping for Pesach
For the first time I will not be spending Passover with my family in Peoria. The opportunity came up to attend a three day intensive training in Portland that I couldn't pass up. I get back late on the first night of Passover and thus won't get to do a first night seder and we don't have plans for the second night.
For most Jewish holidays this wouldn't bother me. Julie and I have so many other things going on what with her graduate school preparation and my design/programming self-improvement projects that neither of us are particularly into the religion thing right now. But Passover is different, we have always seen it as the holiday that most directly connects with what we see as meaningful and valuable in Judaism.
So without seders what are we going to do? For one, we are going to keep Passover in our home. Because we've always been with my parents for the beginning of the holiday we've never really bothered to keep it once we get back home. Getting all that kosher for Passover stuff is such a headache, blah blah blah. But now we live in the Jewish part of a very Jewish city and both are really excited about getting the supplies and prepping our home for the holiday. Who can pass up an opportunity to gobble down delicious macaroons, gefilte fish, Coke with sugar and no corn syrup, and matzo?
We are joining a Passover camping trip to Joshua Tree and will observe the rest of the holiday together at home. The seder is supposed to be a community practice but it'll be nice to try to do the second one at home by ourselves so we can begin to form some of our own traditions.
The attitude that makes this possible is what I am coming to love most about our new life in the west. This past weekend we saw a few old friends who were in town and I struggled a little to explain how we are doing. I ended up framing it best by explaining that our loneliness enables us to work on the things that have for too long been put off. Julie and I individually and in our relationship are finding the freedom that loneliness brings to be both terrifying and exhilarating.
In DC we had a wonderful world of loving friends that we still miss terribly. But in that world we (mostly I) spent all of my time enjoying my friends and not enough time pushing myself to grow. It is incredibly difficult as a twenty-something to find that balance between enjoying the present and building a foundation for the future. Although I am far from getting it right I feel like I am going in the right direction.
Here in LA I feel an anonymity that I've not known before. I went to college on a campus that I knew my whole life in the small city that I grew up in. I got more out of it than anyone could have expected going in but I remember my mom talking about the liberating anonymity of her college move to Boston and never really knew what she meant until now.
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Who is this guy?
I can understand your struggles in your quest to discover and establish your own identity, for I am involved in such a process in my own life, as well. In terms of the self-exploration process, you (Julie) actually have a lot of advantages in your situation. To name a few: you are still very young; you have no kids; you don't own a house (which actually can be a sort of ball & chain, in terms of the financial investment and ongoing maintenance demanded); you both work for a very secure employer; your families of origin sound supportive of your personal value system and career pursuits; and you live in a huge city with virtually boundless opportunities for fun, educational advancement, and enrichment (including Jewish spiritual enrichment).
I, on the other hand, am now closer to 39 than 38. I have two kids still in primary school, and one of them has autism-and timewise, they are my #1 priority, so I can't personally justify investing time in grad school right now (which is the big reason I took an indefinite-perhaps permanent--leave from my MSW studies at UIUC). I am a homeowner. I work for a non-profit agency that is heavily reliant on the federal & state governments' social service funding whims in any given year (which means that the existence of my particular job, my department, and yes, even my agency, is far from secure). And, to top it all off, I live in Peoria (you already know the downsides of living in Peoria, but I still feel compelled to emphasize that this place is not exactly a hotbed of Judaism-which is one reason that my husband and I, who went through the Jewish conversion process when Julie did, have been very lax about practicing Judaism over the last few years). All in all, I would say that you (and Julie) are in a virtually ideal place-geographically as well as demographically-for growth, self-exploration, and fulfillment, not to mention, fun! So I guess the only other thing I can say about your situation is, mazel tov!
Okay, a question: where does one find Coke with real sugar? I'm aware that Mexican Coca-Cola still uses cane sugar, but try finding that here in DC! Any suggestions?
Say more about the trip to Joshua Tree. It sounds great. Where did you find out about it? We will miss you at Passover this year and hope that you enjoy your own celebration. I hope to get some whitefish on Monday so that I can make my own gefilte fish. We have new hagadahs that we got at Spertus in Chicago. In answer to the question about Coke, I recommend that the person in D.C. check stores in Wheaton and Silver Spring, including Giant, for Coke, Pepsi that are "Kosher for Passover" and therefore are made with sugar instead of corn syrup.