Wednesday, April 08, 2009

The Blood On The Door



I went to one Passover dinner, the year I converted to Catholicism. I don't remember much about it except that it was held at the home of the deeply kind woman who served as Deacon John's assistant for RCIA classes and her husband kept looking down at his feet and thinking they were puppies. In fact, he'd bark for them and then call them names of the dogs of his youth. The food, such as it was, was uniformly terrible, bitter herbs not being a metaphor in this case. And I don't like wine, not good or bad, but this was my first go around with Manischewitz. And my last.

What I did like was sitting at an old-fashioned dinner table with all my new found friends and reading quotes from the Bible. It contrasted with my other life, the one where I drank snazzy mixed drinks and quoted from The Sopranos. I thought about how strange things could get and deliverance, which is what we were celebrating. Being spared. The blood on the door. There's a room where I take yoga sometimes and there's a big red ribbon on a door leading to nowhere. I always station myself by that door for some reason. Nobody has ever said anything about the ribbon, the only bright thing in the room and sometimes I look at it when I'm in a painful pose, hoping to be spared from whatever might come next.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: A Day In Paris Miles Davis

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I will be racing home tonight for the Passover Seder. You are correct: the worst part of the ceremony is when I, as the oldest (and in this case, only) male in the house must reenact The Fourth Plague--the symbolic transubstantiation of my feet into young Canis Lupus Familiaris. I always think that this must have scared the hell out of the Egyptians!

Anyway, I agree that Manischewitz is true shit, but you need something to get the taste of Charoset out of your mouth...

Oh, and I did enjoy the "Finish The Bris" episode of The Sopranos.

Lana Gramlich said...

I must admit, I cast off Judaism many years ago, but sometimes I still do miss a good Seder...

Anonymous said...

Your writing is so consistently lovely! Great blog!!

Scott said...

Michelle,

I love how you can tie things together...for example, the Passover dinner and your yoga class...brilliant.

I saw on the Weather Channel that Detroit got snowed on again, and I thought of you...stay warm!

John Ricci said...

My Dearest Michelle
Let us now give thanks for our blessings and most humbly for you and your blog. In these hardest of times let us celebrate the here and now and let us give thanks for all we do have my dear girl. Champagne substitute wishes and caviar replacemenet dreams until better times ahead Amen A salute to your vigorous and humurous blog as always, yes always

the walking man said...

Seems to me that there was enough blood on the doorpost of the Brooks household this year for the Angel of Death to pass you by.

Good thing for the angel to be thankful for...I'd hate to have to go out and kick an angel's ass.