Seder

I am elated to announce that I have fully found my village. When a mom of three can work 6 solid days in a row without a single ounce of family help, you know you have found a community so strong, so amazing, so giving, so loving and so rich in all the important qualities.
Let me back up. I own a small house. We can't afford to update it with well...anything. Although honestly I have recently had the realization (once again) that we are not the kind of people that will ever choose to spend extra money on material things. We spend plenty of money monthly, but we choose to spend it all on local and organic food, nice wine and good beer, shade grown organic coffee, and our kids sports. So I own a small house. And the yards are embarrassing, the furniture a small step away from a disgrace. And as adam likes to point out to random friends of mine...don't look too close at any one area of our house for too long.
I don't have a cleaning lady. I have three small children and a dog. in a small house, have I mentioned that. Adam works, I work. And the moments we aren't working we are out and about in the natural world with our children.
So naturally I almost never invited my amazing friends over for dinner. And yet time and time again I find myself two glasses of wine deep on a Friday afternoon at a friend's house. The kids happy hour playdate outlasted the sun going down, dinnertime and often bedtime. These thoughts raced through my head on my second or third Friday in a row of staying for drinks and dinner at a friend's house. Immediately after I specifically thought: hmmm I wonder when my friends will catch on that I never have anyone over for dinner....my friend's husband turned to me and said: So Sarah are you hosting Passover this year...next week?
I did what any slightly tipsy mom of three who claims to be half Jewish and has a major complex about having couples/families over for dinner...I said a strong and definitive YES.
And so it began.
I had to google Passover. I  talked to my "more jewish friends" and started to wrap my brain around what it would look like. four families. 8 adults. 8 children. in my 1000 square foot home. 1/3 of which was my room and therefore off limits. Haggadah. What the F is a Haggadah? I started to search and read them and found them laden religion. fancy that. And not our thing.
After quite a bit of reading and searching I found an amazing humanist Haggadah. It touched upon the meaning of Passover, why certain foods are served, the history. But so much more. It covered not just the struggle of Jews thousands of years ago and throughout modern times, but the struggle for all people to obtain freedom. It mentions poverty, homophobia, racism, war, injustice. It touched upon the importance of NEVER celebrating in the demise of your enemy.
I worried for days about how my friends and their husbands would take reading a 27 page Haggadah.
I prepared food as did my lovely friends. And the evening came together. How could it not? Any tradition, any holiday that asks you to drink  4 cups of wine will turn out fine. The kids came and went. colored, listened, retreated to the playroom and then came in occasionally to drink their cup of sparkling juice as we downed our wine. We laughed and joked. But mostly we read. I could feel the intensity of everyone's thoughts. I reveled in the mindfulness of reading and listening to the struggled the Jews have endured. As the part about the Holocaust was read I felt a great surge of sadness and strength. For my dad's parents came from Poland around 1920 and left behind many family members that lost their lives during the Holocaust. I felt proud to be surrounded by families who all view life more or less through the humanist lens. Families that values humans, their values, their worth. Friends that place their energy on the welfare of all humankind.
And so my Seder came and went. The kids were slightly dumbfounded. I heard comments of being bored. I saw a few confused looks. But their plates were cleaned and their play barely interrupted. The adults ate, drank, thought, talked. Long after the Haggadah was finished I heard bits and pieces of historical and philosophical talk surface.
For me it was a victory in every sense. Inviting 3 other families into my small home. Putting myself out there in a vulnerable way. Introducing a Haggadah I felt so in touch with and at the end of the night getting the overall approval of everyone attending. Maybe even Adam. who was my biggest skeptic.
that was my Seder, with some of my closest friends. We will see what my next Passover brings.