Something Missing at the Holidays...

In the war of who gets what holiday at their house, my mom won Thanksgiving. My grandma got the rest of the holidays. Passover has always been at my grandparent's house.

Like most other holidays, this year most things were the same as they always were... We still use the Haggadah my mother hand-wrote for the passover Seder. My family is utterly unable to pronounce the Hebrew without a lot of assistance from me and my sister. In reading the Passover story, the same words (yes, the English ones) get mispronounced. The meal is awesome - brisket and all the usual goodies.

For those of you who aren't overly familiar with the Seder, partway through, a piece of matzoh called the affikomen gets hidden. The kids all try to find it... Supposedly you're supposed to eat it as dessert, but really matzoh doesn't make much of a dessert. Whoever finds it gets a present.

My grandfather always led the Seder. He butchered the prayer over the wine. He always hid the affikomen in the same place every year... Well, I suppose that's not entirely true. There were a total of 3 hiding spaces that I remember over the course of the past 30 years: inside the microwave, the wine rack and inside the refrigerator. He would always act so surprised when we found the affikomen so quickly. And each of us, regardless of whether we found the matzoh or not, would receive a prize. (Cash usually, unless grandpa had something sparkly he wanted to dole out to his girls)

But this was the first holiday without my grandfather.

His place was set and left empty at the head of the table. I started off the Seder as the leader. I mispronounced a few words, though probably not the same ones he usually did. I juggled the reading with Andrew on my lap as he tried to fish around in a glass of water with his fork. You can see where this is going, right? I ended up leaving the table wiping water off my glasses, wishing that I had a second outfit in the car for myself because I was freaking drenched.

My dad hid the affikomen. My sister and I led our cousins and Andrew around the house, checking out all the usual hiding places... Finally, Andrew emerged victorious - drawing the matzoh out of the microwave. He was so cute waiving it around, bring it to my dad proudly yelling, "PAPA I FOUND IT!" Dad passed out a few bills to each of us as our rewards for playing along. Then Andrew ran around the house waiving his prize, "MOMMY! I HAVE MONEY!"

After dinner, my cousin was sitting in grandpa's chair playing on his gameboy. It was hard to see Matt there instead of grandpa, nodding off like he always did after the meal.

I've always loved having the family together for the holidays. Any holiday. Any occasion. But something...someone...was very noticeably absent this year.

I'm not sure how I managed not to shed any tears. It's just not the same without him.