What do you do when you have one of the pickiest eaters in the world living under your roof, and you are about to enter into a religious observance that prohibits the consumption of two of the only three food items she’ll eat, pizza and pasta?
The Passover ritual is proof positive that wonders shall never cease. As we seek to identify with our ancestors who fled from Egypt many thousands of years ago, we rid our home of all food with yeast. After all, if the ancient Hebrews could eat cakes of unleavened bread for the months and years that they fled through the desert, certaily we could do it for eight days.
But how will Jamie eat matzah, the second coming of tasteless cardboard? And will she go anywhere near a hard-boiled egg dipped in salt water? Horseradish, literally cut from the root? And gefilte fish?? The Red Sea should sooner part than we should watch our 12-year-old resort to such torture.
But wonders never cease. “Hey Dad, can we buy some matzah early?”
“What, you want to get it over with? It doesn’t work that way!”
“No, I like it.”
“________”
“Dad?”
“________”
“Are you okay, Dad?”
She likes matzah. She who eats around anything red or green in her salad, she who would declare anything she doesn’t recognize to be inedible, she who would be fine with macaroni morning, noon, and night, she for whom we must buy pulp-free orange juice…she likes matzah?
It’s a miracle! Wait…that’s the wrong holiday. It is some sort of incredible affirmation of the mysterious power of faith-based rituals.
As for the gefilte fish…well, let’s not press our luck.