4/10
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| Hot crossed buns |
It’s Good Friday.
*The flashing lights of emergency vehicles and whine of sirens is becoming a constant part of every day. On every street around me now.
* It is so windy today, my hat is blown off crossing Fredrick Douglass. It lands right in the middle of the street. The cars stop and allow me to retrieve my hat.
* The buses are now free and you enter through the back, not the front, the driver separated from everyone else. There was a story of a driver sneezed on by a rider who didn’t cover. Eleven days later, he was dead. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/detroit-bus-driver-coronavirus.html). We get those double seats all to ourselves now. There is that. In the effort to protect the driver, the handicapped seats are now cut off.
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It’s now the second day of Passover. The night of first Seder, I tuned into my friend Steve’s “live streamed seder,” live from his living room and starring his family. As usual, we gathered from around the world for Steve’s unique and universal take on the holidays, including his clever and yes, corny, rewrites of traditional songs. (Sure easier to sing and saves some time…) Oh and it turns out one verse and chorus of Dayenu is perfect timing for hand washing.
It feels good to be connected, but also sad. I’ve got over 40 years of Passover memories. From my first with my colleague David on Long Island, from the Reconstructionist/Zionist tradition, to a friend of my parents near Pittsburgh providing matzoh ball soup and gefilte fish for my new wife as small icons as we made our way west to Tulsa. How alone she must have felt. Thirty years of family seders. My uncle-in-law playing banjo for Dayenu...The endless Maxwell House Haggadah. The charoset and brisket. Our interfaith couples group in Pittsburgh. Katherine’s creative, progressive and probing seder of friends. Look it’s a part of me.
At our family’s seder, at my in laws, we wrote our names in the back of the Conservative Haggadah we used every year. Once, I looked and saw the name of a now divorced and gone member of the family. I thought, let that never be me. Well, just goes to show. I wonder what thoughts come up when my name is seen in the back of a Haggadah. It is still a party of me.
Here’s what I wrote on my Passover post to my Chaverim this year…
To my chaverim...Happy Passover...may our doorposts be clearly marked. May the shadow of that angel pass us over. May we leave this narrow space and walk into the open places once again....
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And it is a day of success! We succeed in getting the facebook group for the Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association rebooted, as well as reclaiming the homepage. It took a lot of e-mails phone calls and texts to get it done, but it’s done. Just in time for easter weekend. The front line workers have a place to communicate with one another.
And after a session with my buddy Steve, I’m ready to give a (virtual) West Park open mic a go. I set up the ZOOM room and we’re ready, And of course there are multiple foul ups and some people can’t figure out how to get in and never do get in and the link to facebook never gets accomplished, BUT, we had an open mic. We had original songs and covers and our young Saraiya and an old me and we sang and talked and it was good. Next week will be better.
I had been slightly unsure as to whether I should wait a week, being Good Friday and all. But all of us are aware of the death out there. And it was a chance to get people together with each other. And in the end, that is reason enough.
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Hard to know how do we deal with Good Friday in this coronavirusworld? Good Friday’s all about death. And the silence of God. And Jesus giving in and acceptance. What do we have Good Friday, 2020? There’s front page picture in the daily news of the city turning to an already crowded Hart’s Island to bury people. It was running out of room before. (https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-hart-island-burying-capacity-dead-challenges-20200410-vtxpzjd2qvfypcjf3daicvbrpi-story.html)
A man went to a funeral and a few days later, a birthday party. Three weeks later, 15 had been infected and three died.How do you live with that?
( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/chicago-coronavirus-cluster-super-spreading-event ). It’s all the death I need.
I walk down Fredrick Douglass and see all the empty shops, restaurants, bars. Harlem Tavern still adorned for a St. Patrick’s celebration that never happened. Just like time stopped.Silent, singular masked people walking the quiet streets. It’s seriously post-apocalyptic. I don’t need a three hour Good Friday service. And really, three days from now this will not be over.
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On the way home from picking up a prescription, I stop at the Silver Moon Bakery. Hot crossed buns. Fresh and yes, hot. Good memories of childhood. Something endearingly human about turning crosses into sweet icing decorations on top of warm buns.
It’s Good Friday.
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