Year of a thousand seders

The first time I had a seder at my dinner table, I forgot to make salt water that afternoon. My father looked at me inquiringly, and I jumped up, mixed it up quickly and sat down, fuming at myself. This year, I’ve already made salt water about four times. Now it’s just part of my after-dinner routine as I bring dishes into the kitchen.

We’ve started our thousand seders so Alex can get used to the rituals and rhythms. Every night we add another part of the service. We started with just the opening blessing and the four questions. We’ve added dipping the greens in salt water, saying the 10 plagues and dipping a spoon in a glass of wine (my sister thought Alex would enjoy doing this, and she was right). Tonight we’ll sing Dayenu for the first time, so I spent time on Youtube looking for a good video of someone singing it. (Found a cool remix, but it’s more a rap homage to Passover than a cover of Dayenu.)

We also read through the Four Sons (or Four Children, as many translations now read). When I get to the child too young to ask a question, I always choke up a little. I’m thinking Alex has never asked why we do certain things. And each time we run through our mini seder I think of Sandy Miller-Jacobs’ essay on Passover, Four Children at the Seder, a moving essay about how special needs children may or may not participate in a seder. They are the “fifth child,” Miller Jacobs says. Or perhaps it is their siblings, embarrassed and uncomfortable and unwilling to attend, who are that absent, fifth child.

Last night Alex jumped up to go to the bathroom, get himself a little snack of the kind of crackers that are strictly forbidden during Passover and in general decided he’d had about enough seder for one night. That was OK. We’d hit our high points.

I hope Miller-Jacobs, a professor of Special Ed. at Hebrew College in Lexington, Mass., would find our seder inclusive. And while we’ve broken all kinds of rules – eating matzoh the week before Passover among them – I wish only I’d thought of this earlier.