The Story of This Pasover

Nobody has time for a flat tire. I don’t even know what happened. The car was pulling a bit to the right, so I pulled over to the side of I-90 and found the front right tire to be almost completely shredded.

I’m not the most handy fellow. I learned how to change a headlight bulb my senior year in college from one of my girlfriends. Until last night, I had never even used a jack. In theory, I suppose, I could have looked it up on YouTube from my phone. But I was happy to sit with my laptop and wait for roadside assistance to come and change my tire.

The State Trooper thought it was probably time for me to learn a valuable life skill.

Today, I’m really hoping that I can get an emergency appointment with my mechanic to get new tires on, because we’re scheduled to drive off to Providence tomorrow morning for a second seder. And all of the stuff we want to bring won’t actually fit in Mrs. Fussy’s car.

But even if I can get an appointment, I’m still screwed.

The beginning of Passover is a lot like Thanksgiving. There’s a giant festive meal, the seder, that traditionally consists of several components. I’ve almost assembled them all, but I also need to prepare them. And I know that I still have to make it out to the store to grab some parsley, that is unless I plan to use ramps in its place. By the letter of the observance, I’m sure ramps would be fine. But it would feel wrong because so much of Passover is steeped in tradition.

Anyhow, I’ve got the fixins for a basic charoset. That’s apples, nuts, cinnamon, and wine. But ideally this would have been started last night so the ingredients had a chance to meld. Oh well.

The meat is marinating.

I’ll have to hard boil some eggs. Make matzoh balls. Doctor up my chicken broth into actual soup, which will include some cross cut beef ribs. The folks at Primal were awesome about using their saw to cut one rib into four pieces for me.

However, Primal was less awesome in the lamb shank department. My god, that was an expensive frozen leg bone. And since it was frozen, I’ll have to do the knife work to strip much of the meat from the bone. Hopefully, it’s defrosted by noon. Now let’s never speak of this again.

I think we should probably have some kind of vegetable, and I’ll have to grill the beef we’re having for dinner too.

All of this is on top of a busy work schedule. Fridays are always a push to close out the week. But it’s all in the service of doing fun things for Yelp and the blog. And I guess now, I’m hoping to spend some time at the mechanics too. But before driving over there, I’ll probably have to pump some more air into the spare tire, which is riding crazy low.

Still, it’s better than living as slaves in Egypt. It’s better than wandering around from encampment to encampment in the wilderness for forty years. Perhaps most importantly, this hiccup at the end of the week will remind me that Passover isn’t about the food. It’s about the telling of the story.

I do like telling stories.

So I’ll try not to sweat it. The tire thing could have ended badly. Nobody was hurt. It isn’t going to lead to financial ruin. This is just an inconvenience. Perhaps I should be thankful for the freedom that having a car brings. And to push the theme a little, maybe this can be a reminder of how we’re enslaved by suburban desires and the realities of city life that make reliable automobiles a necessity of modern life.

A happy Passover to all who are observing it. Enjoy your seders. To everyone else, enjoy all those wonderful things I’ll be avoiding this upcoming week. And don’t forget to mark your calendars for Thursday, April 28. That’s when we’re having lunch at Ama Cocina!

Wish me luck.