I could smell my wife’s cooking from outside the front door to our apartment.
She hadn’t spent more than an hour in the kitchen that afternoon; her other commitments to lesson planning, phone calls to her students’ families and parenting didn’t leave time for much more than that. But she made the most of that hour, churning out three different dishes in preparation for our Passover seder – the formal holiday feast – the next evening.
We left when she was finished for our daily constitutional that prevents cabin fever from winning the battle for control of our sanity. I came back a half hour later to retrieve sweatshirts for my family but paused before putting my key in the lock.
I stood outside our door and inhaled the aromas of spice, comfort and love creeping into the hallway. I closed my eyes for a moment, forcing myself to experience the feelings brought on by the sweetness infiltrating the air. The warmth traveled through me like a spring thaw; an appropriate analogy, given the time of year.
But it didn’t feel like Passover.
Passover is the Jewish holiday that celebrates the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. Each year, we retell the story of our ancestors’ four hundred year enslavement and our eventual path to salvation when God and Moses led us to freedom. We include a number of different items on our seder plate to symbolize the various aspects of the story:
- maror, a bitter vegetable, for the bitterness of slavery;
- karpas, a green vegetable, for spring, new life and freedom;
- charoset, a mixture of fruit, nuts and spices for the mortar the Israelite slaves used to make bricks;
- a shank bone, for the “strong hand and outstretched arm” that God used to free us from slavery;
- a hard-boiled or roasted egg, for the sacrifice the priests would offer in the Holy Temple during Passover;
- and, of course, matzah, the flat, dry bread that did not have time to rise because our ancestors left Egypt in such a hurry.
Usually, we spend the days leading up to Passover cleaning our home, preparing enough food to feed a small army and setting up tables and chairs for our inevitably too-crowded seder. We also work on finishing off all of our chametz – any leavened bread products – because matzah is the only bread we are supposed to eat during the eight days of the holiday.
This year, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been spending our time in our apartment keeping up with work and school commitments. We’ve been trying to find the balance between progress notes, phone calls, homework assignments and Zoom classes, while still trying to enjoy the time we’re now spending together as a family.
I wouldn’t say that the adjustment has been as difficult as one of the plagues that God brought down on the Egyptians; it’s certainly been easier than all of the water sources turning to blood or infestations of lice or locusts. But a family of four being shut inside a two-bedroom apartment for twenty-three hours a day is going to present some challenges. We’ve struggled with constantly being around each other, maintaining our productivity and feeling anxious about the current state of the outside world.
And yet, the underlying messages of Passover – the reminders that nature is being reborn after winter and that we are privileged to be free people – have still managed to break through the noise.
I see rebirth in the small plants beginning to sprout on our kitchen windowsill and in the caterpillars spinning chrysalises in preparation for transformation into butterflies.
I see growth in my children’s faces as they realize their abilities to comprehend new academic skills, even outside of school.
I see the privilege of T and me being able to continue our jobs from home and having enough devices for our kids to maintain their interactions with their friends during isolation.
I see the freedom of being able to connect with loved ones for a seder, regardless of their physical locations or the cautions against large gatherings.
The conflicts still come back, of course. We are human, after all, which means that there are still ample opportunities for misunderstandings, arguments and childish tantrums (some of which are actually from the children).
When those disagreements arise, I try to remember that moment in the hallway with my key in the lock. I imagine the warmth of home coming over me. I think of the contentment of family contrasted against the chill of the socially-distanced air outside. I picture the Coronavirus-triggered panic attacks being overcome by the relaxing stillness of my wife’s head on my shoulder as we watch television together.
We might still be enslaved by the COVID-19 taskmaster that keeps us confined to our homes and prevents too much interpersonal interaction.
But, even in those moments, I can still become free again.
