Passover has come and gone...and I was so busy cleaning and cleaning and cooking and cleaning and entertaining and cleaning (get the theme) that I did not have time to post. By the time it occurred to me that I could have cleaned and cooked in the wedding dress (with an apron of course) the holiday was over.
Except that it is not really over.
We start with emptying and cleaning and "turning" the kitchen into a kosher for Pesach space. All this...several hours of all this...has to happen before the Pesach food comes in. So I empty cupboards and throw out anything with "chumetz" in it, replace the regular dishes and utensils with those I use for Pesach.
This takes hours and has turned into a meditation. As the remnants of chumetz are swept from my kitchen, the remnants of last years hurts and anger and regrets and worries are swept from my heart. I scrub the corners of the counter and unearth my own hidden fears. The story of walking out of Egypt, "mitzraim" runs through my head and makes me think about the ways that I have moved from a narrow place to a wide place in the past year. And the ways that I still need to move and grow and change.
It must have been very difficult to pack up and leave on a moments notice, to walk from the security of narrowness into the unknown open desert. To leave fears and pains and constriction for freedom and opportunity. To examine old confining patterns and old behaviors, and to stretch into a new role and way of being. Would I have the courage to walk into the sea that is splitting open before me? Would I yearn for the prison that I know, afraid of the freedom that I have never experienced?
Maybe this is why Pesach starts with so much work, and then seems to end without closure. Of course it does not end that way, it leads into counting the "Omer" seven weeks that lead us to Sinai and Torah. It takes at least that long to burn off our old habits in the searing heat of the desert and open to another way to live. And this year... I have many reasons to count.
To be continued.
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