The Pesach seder is all about empathy.

Wait…shit…she has used that word before. Um…what is Pesach again? And what is a seder? Pesach–or Passover–is a Jewish holiday in the spring that commemorates the exodus out of Egypt. The seder is the ritual meal that recounts this exodus. We read from a book, called the haggadah, and there are certain prescribed foods that must be eaten. Last night kicked off this eight-day holiday.

Marge Piercy writes in her book Pesach for the Rest of Us:

A seder can give a sense of connection—spiritual or activist or communal or simply sensual. The traditional haggadah tells us that each Jew should feel as if she or he (it of course said he) personally was freed by the Exodus and left Egypt that night—an empathy across history that every haggadah tries to make happen in each individual who attends. Martin Buber urged us to feel a connection through history back to that first generation that dared seek freedom.

So there’s no division. It’s not that you’re sitting at a nice table in a suburban house listening to a story. You are in Egypt. You are grabbing your dough because there is no time to let it rise. You are feeling the anxiety and elation of the exodus, understanding how it feels to be released from slavery with the chance that you won’t make it to the other side of the Red Sea.

It is wrong to use the word “them.” It is all about the “we.” We were slaves in Egypt. We fled Egypt. We were led by Moses. There is even a point in the ceremony where we talk about the four types of children: the wise son, the wicked son, the simple son, and the one who does not know enough to ask. The wise son asks “what is the meaning behind these commandments?” (because it’s never wrong in Judaism to question something if you do so respectfully). The wicked son asks, “what does the seder mean for you?” effectively removing himself from the ritual. It is fine to question, it is fine to be uneducated, it is fine to not even know enough to ask. But to divide yourself from the experience? That is considered “wicked.”

Interesting. Right?

So, we’re told to be empathetic. To essentially reenact the feelings, the emotions, the thoughts that we went through when we were leaving Egypt. It’s a difficult feat. I mean, it’s hard to really get a sense of the panic when you’re in a comfortable suburban living room. And it’s hard to appreciate the matzah and hold it as a memory of what you went through when you had to flee when you semi-resent the matzah and the fact that you can’t eat pasta for eight days.

And at the end of the day, can you really teach empathy? Can you tell someone “be empathetic” and have them become empathetic? Can someone outside of the experience understand what it is like to be in the experience without even dipping a toe into its waters? And how annoyed would you be if your mother started saying, “when we were at the retrieval…” Would you be touched or would it annoy the crap out of you if other people were co-opting your experience in order to practice empathy?

One morning, I woke up at my Jewish social action camp and my counselor slapped a letter on my shirt before breakfast. No explanation. My friends and I sat at the breakfast table talking about how our counselor was a nutjob and I left on the A as part of our middle-school-girl joke mostly because I saw that a few other kids also had an A on their shirt and it was probably some bizarre Jewish thing that I just didn’t know about yet.

After breakfast, I went to my first activity and sat down next to a counselor that I really liked when I got in the room. He promptly got up without a word and moved to another seat. My heart started to pound as I wondered why he was angry with me. The activity was jujutsu and my friend, Rachel, and I were usually partners. But on this day, the group was uneven because she was absent and the counselor asked me to sit out since I didn’t have a partner. I watched the entire activity from the edge of the mat.

I was a pretty sensitive 14-year-old (and still am–sensitive, I mean. Not 14) and I spent the next activity period–art–wondering why the jujutsu counselor was angry with me. I thought I was probably being paranoid, but the art counselor never took anything from me when I offered it to her. She needed scissors, I would hand her a pair, and she’d take the ones that Liz or Alicia were holding out. That’s okay. Maybe she didn’t see mine. Or hear me calling out things like, “HERE SUSAN I HAVE MORE BEADS RIGHT HERE IF YOU NEED THEM” as I held out a dixie cup full of glass beads.

At lunch, after I helped myself to the food that was being passed around, the counselor at our table snatched the plate from me and brought it back to the kitchen. She returned with a new plate of food and said to the rest of the table, “I just thought we’d want a different plate now.”

Back at our cabin, I went to the bathroom and when I came out, the counselor loudly exclaimed that she now needed to go bleach the bathroom and we should all get into our bunk beds and be quiet while she was busy.

At rest time, I stared at the ceiling and wondered what I had done to piss everyone off.

Even dumping ice water out of an empty tennis ball can over the top of the shower didn’t earn me this reception.

Even the time when we were messing around in the bathroom and I accidentally pulled the sink out of the wall, flooding the bunk, didn’t earn me this reception.

I must have really fucked up somewhere.

At free time, my friends told me that they didn’t want to hang out with me. I had obviously done something to piss off every counselor and frankly, they didn’t want the guilt by association. So I spent free time alone. I read a book. I pretended that I was fine. Just reading a book. It’s my fucking free time. And that’s what I like to do with my free time. Sit by myself. Read a book. Not socialize.

Everywhere I went, people ignored me. Or moved. Or scrunched up their nose as if I hadn’t bathed in three weeks. Even though all the counselors used to joke that I was the cleanest kid at camp. No one joked with me anymore. No one came close enough to me to joke with me. At dinner, a few people got up and moved from my table so I ended up skipping the meal because I was afraid I’d also have to eat alone.

Will Melissa ever learn why everyone hates her suddenly? Can empathy really be taught? Tune in for the second installment of “Teaching Empathy” because this post is getting way too long…

As you can see, I bear a striking resemblance to Infertile Myrtle. Though it’s impossible to tell from this picture, I do, indeed, have a uterus of doom. I also often wear my hair in squash blossoms to feign youthfulness.

(whisper whisper…
I didn’t realize she was so small!

I didn’t realize she was going to be so…triangular. Do you think she’s really that triangular in real life? It must be so hard to buy jeans.

I know–what kind of body type is that? Isosceles?

Does she only own one pair of shoes? She seems to wear those Mary Janes a lot… Maybe she spent all of her money on fertility treatments and now she doesn’t have enough for shoes. Poor thing.

Are those her hands or is she wearing oven mitts?

She sure does wear a lot of purple. Isn’t that a lot of purple?

It looks like she’s wearing glasses. Infertile Myrtle doesn’t wear glasses. Do you think Myrtle wears contacts?
whisper whisper…)

We made this film because we have received so much good advice over the years and we thought that the kindest thing to do would be to pass it along to others in the community. I mean, you probably haven’t thought about some of these things–just relaxing, going on a vacation, or propping up your hips. Feel free to send me all the money you save now that you can stop using IVF.

We’ve placed a link in the sidebar to the YouTube page if you wish to view the film in the future. The YouTube url is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIH5ayG1qho in case you have any Aunt Janes in your life. Sometimes images speak louder than words. Feel free to pass it along next time you’re banging your head against the wall…

There were also many pieces of advice that were cut from the song simply due to length. Perhaps in the future, we will pull together an “uncut” version that will include verses about Aunt Jane knowing people who have tried longer, used the power of prayer, and were satisfied by simply owning a puppy (or, as Aunt Jane would say, adopting a puppy). Rest assured, we are currently at work on the next installment of Infertile Myrtle and the Uterus of Doom.

And now the questions…

Q: What are squash blossoms?
A: Squash blossoms are a traditional Hopi (Native American) hairstyle for unmarried women. They are also a hairstyle for a woman who is traveling through Norway for a few weeks and forgets to bring a hair clip but finds two rubberbands in the house where she is staying in Oslo. It is also the hairstyle of this type of woman when she returns stateside and continues to use these same rubberbands until they snap one morning. This hairstyle is still worn intermittently even though this woman is married and is not a member of the Hopi tribe.

Q: What are the words on the dresses of the sisterhood of mommies? They’re blurry on my computer?
A: The three dresses read from left to right: my child slept through the night at 2 weeks; my child speaks six languages fluently; I lost the baby weight in 4 days.

Q: Were you singing? Who was playing piano?
A: I was singing. The music came from stringing together bars of sample music that came with Josh’s Mac. And, of course, all visuals were made on Microsoft Paint.

Thank you for all the kinds words about the movie. We had a lot of fun making it and we never would have tried to make a cartoon if not for Bea and her film festival. So a huge thank you to Bea. Luckily, we just had a five-hour drive up I-95 so we now have a palm pilot full of lyrics for our next film–coming soon.

Today/tomorrow (that damn time difference!) kicks off the International Infertility Film Festival, the brain-child of the amazing Bea from Infertile Fantasies. My entry is below. As you watch it, I know you’re going to be asking yourself is Infertile Myrtle an alter-ego of Melissa? First of all, my body is far far faaaaaar more triangular. And if you don’t believe me, I will post some photos along with director’s commentary over the weekend–I need a space to pass along all the other great advice I’ve received over the years that couldn’t make it into the film due to space. I know you’re waiting with bated breath–was Melissa really given the secret key to conception? Watch my film and find out. But I have a feeling you’ll be cancelling that next appointment at the clinic and heading straight for Jamaica when you hear some of these golden nuggets of wisdom…

We are already thinking out the next installment of Infertile Myrtle and the Uterus of Doom. We are, of course, also gladly accepting ideas for future installments. Long live Microsoft Paint. I can see her now–gracing the silver screen, accepting her Oscar, and thanking the Academy. And then making a break for the bathroom for her 8 p.m. stim injection.

If you like this entry, please go to the International Infertility Film Festival’s main site by clicking on the name and you will be directed to all the other entries in this year’s festival. Oh…and if you don’t like this entry, it really isn’t indicative of the fantastic work housed at the IIFF. So click on over. Happy viewing.

Can’t eat one. more. piece. of. melba. toast.

Must eat one. more. piece. of. melba. toast.

Why, oh, why did I open all of those boxes of melba toast, eat three crackers, and then leave five flavours of melba toast for consumption pre-Pesach?

It’s a carb fest at our house. It’s eat-it-or-toss-it time. You know, the chamatz cleaning and all. And I’m going the “eating it” route.

It has made me think about choices I make that create more work for myself in the future. Just a thought for a future post…

Tomorrow, I will not have the Friday Blog Roundup because the divine Ms. Bea over at Infertile Fantasies will be rounding up all of the infertility-and-loss-themed films that people have been creating over the past few months for the International Infertility Film Festival (and unlike our American House of Pancakes, this film festival is truly international with bloggers spanning from the States to Australia). Our entry will be up on the blog tomorrow morning due to Pesach stress and travel. And between Friday and Saturday, bloggers around the world will be posting their films (hence the scattering of posting times).

If I had been more clever, I would have made the subject of our film Aunt Flo instead of Aunt Jane.

But since I didn’t consider this idea until this morning and there is pretty much no way I could convince my film editor…um…husband…Josh…to redo the entire film to make every reference to Aunt Jane become Aunt Flo… Well, we’ll just have to leave it as Melissa-is-not-that-quick-on-the-uptake and hopefully I’ll go with the obvious in the future.

Looking forward to seeing everyone’s movie tomorrow. Luckily, it’s still a few days before Pesach so I can pop some popcorn. Sneak a diet coke into the living room (where we’ve barred all outside concessions). Three cheers for Bea!

Preparing for Pesach can be a little bit like infertility sex.

But before we get to that, I need to say that Pesach cleaning was kicking my ass.

Notice the was.

Mrs. Type-A has decided to take a new approach to Pesach cleaning.

Wait…let me back up for the non-Jews. Before Pesach (also known as Passover) each year, you go through the house, cleaning thoroughly and removing everything that is chamatz out of the house. Chamatz breaks down into two categories. The first category is anything made from fermented grain (for example, flour). The second category is anything that has the power to ferment other dough (for example, yeast or sourdough starter). So you take out your Costco-sized box of goldfish crackers and the bagels that you’ve packed into the freezer and you get rid of it. You eat it or you donate it (and the point of this post is not to give you the intricate details of dealing with chamatz, so I’m just going to throw out the comment now that there is more to dealing with chamatz than this, but I’m simplifying it because I’m assuming that I am not your source for all things Jewish).

Growing up, I loved Pesach as a holiday. It’s a little hard for a vegetarian since you eliminate most of the grain food group, but I liked getting together with family. Pesach hit its peak for me in college. We threw huge non-denominational seders in our apartment. My roommate and I would become giddy over our cleaning schedule–two Type-A girls in heaven with a bucket of bleach and a toothbrush to clean between every tile in the bathroom. I liked that process of turning over my kitchen and getting rid of food I wasn’t going to eat and reorganizing. Pesach practically spoon-feeds cleaning orgasms to a Type-A personality.

But once I got married, Pesach sort of changed into a cesspool of stress that grew little by little over the years. First it was the balance of family–where do we go for the seder (the ritual meal)–your family or mine? Prior to marriage, it was a no-brainer. There was only one family to consider. But add in Josh’s feelings and the feelings of everyone else in his family and mine and we had to think through how we were going to handle Pesach year after year.

Then came the first round of infertility. I think there are many similarities between how Christians celebrate Christmas–family coming together, many expectations, a focus on children–and the way Jews celebrate Pesach. It’s a big family holiday. And I have a big family. We would go to the seder and people would ask us when we were going to have children and cousins would pass around their sonogram pictures. I would try to keep myself from losing it during the service when we read aloud about the “barren women of Jerusalem.” What about the freakin’ barren women of Maryland? When would they be “a happy mother of children” (psalm 113)?

And finally, the burden of turning over the house (in other words, removing the chamatz) as life simply became too busy. It became one more chore that I dreaded–one more thing that I had to do on a long to-do list. I still did it every year, but it wasn’t with the lightness and satisfaction that came from cleaning with my college roommate. It was with a heaviness and a franticness and an anxiousness. Would I finish in time? Did I do a good enough job? Was someone fucking up all of my hard work by eating noodles in a kitchen that I just cleaned?

And I have to admit, I was dreading Pesach this year. I started worrying about Pesach months ago, and the stress has only grown as the holiday loomed closer and closer. I didn’t know how I was going to do work, volunteer, parent and set-up for this holiday all at the same time. I spent Saturday morning organizing and I ended up snapping at everyone, especially Josh who snarkily told me that it was truly about getting the chamatz out of our hearts and not the chamatz out of our home. It really doesn’t help when you’re about to have a nervous breakdown and your husband is smiling and saying, “what chamatz are you holding in your heart, chamoodi?”

Hmmm…what is fermenting in my heart at the moment?

There is definitely a big pile of floury hope. And if you make a well in the center and start pouring inside the salt that has been rubbed in open wounds and the yeasty froth of anger that I feel towards some people and the slickness of oil as I slip away from certain friendships–I believe you form some type of bready mixture that is most definitely chamatz.

Out it must go.

As I tottered on the edge of a breakdown, I spent precious cleaning minutes at the computer googling the rules of Pesach cleaning. And discovered that while it is certainly nice to have a bathroom so clean that you can eat off the bleached tiles, it was never necessary nor a part of the Pesach cleaning ritual of removing chamatz. This idea from an article on Pesach cleaning drove the point home:

One important point: If you feel like going beyond the limit and scraping the walls and ceiling, go right ahead. Of course it’s not required, but the halacha is actually stated in Shulchan Aruch that no one is allowed to laugh at you. In the words of the rabbis, Yisrael kedoshim heim — “Jews are holy” when they go beyond the letter of the law.

Be careful, however, not to go so far that you develop an antagonistic attitude toward Passover. If all this extra, non-required cleaning is going to make you dread the holiday, then forget about it. And certainly you should not clean so much that you’re exhausted for the Passover Seder. Part of being “holy” is appreciating the holiday, too!

In other words, when it ceases to be enjoyable anymore, you should regroup and find the balance.

There are still certain things that must get done–turning over the kitchen, for instance. I need to go through the cupboards and the refrigerator and remove all the cookies and crackers. I need to clean and put away the chamatz dishes. But if I don’t get to bleach every bathroom before I head out to the first seder? I guess it just won’t get done.

It does bear a striking resemblance to what the East Village Mamele calls the Baatan Sex March. The sex that replaced the lovemaking that occurred in the first two or three months of trying. Determined sex. Strategic sex. The kind that is just no fun at all. But how do you grab back the happiness when it gets to this point? How do you keep conception from becoming such a cesspool of stress that it sucks you under to the point where you can’t even enjoy new motherhood when it happens because you’re still trying to swim your way out of that slime? And is it even possible to cut back and do the minimum to preserve sanity when your emotions are so deeply entrenched in the process? I’ve read about people who have set up breaks for themselves–not medically-prescribed breaks, but self-prescribed emotional breaks–and I want to learn how to do that. How to take the Baatanness out of the sex march and make it have the lightness and giddyness that existed in the first few months. Okay, perhaps you can never go back to the giddyness, but you can probably get back to a point where sex doesn’t feel like a chore that you’ve scheduled on the calendar. Where it goes back to being fun instead of something that feels semi-superfluous considering all the real work is performed by the RE.

In other words, I think I need to spend some time removing the chamatz from my hoohaa.

As for the chamatz I’ve already identified in my heart? Perhaps this week would be bette
r spent reflecting on how to clean that up before the holiday begins. Perhaps there is more googling to be done while I eat through the rest of the crackers in the cupboards. Or I’ll just have to save that chamatz for another year. I mean, there are only so many crevices a girl can clean in one week…