Last night, following in the tradition of our parents, grandparents and forefathers, we had the second of two passover seders. As any woman can tell you who has prepared one of these events – you must be a caterer, shopper, event planner, furniture mover, dishwasher, choirmaster and photographer. This year we had to find a solution to a very serious problem. Our son who attends McGill in Montreal had an exam and couldn’t join us. Our daughter Bel, her husband and their children also couldn’t join us because C is just 2 weeks old. We had to find a way to make them a part of the seder, and I suggested using our webcam. My husband Stan loved the idea, but because he isn’t exactly computer savvy, and I am the resident computer guru (not hard when there are only two of you), I had to add this to my other duties.
After a full week of cooking, cleaning and preparing, it all came together. But it certainly looked iffy an hour before the service began. We asked everyone to be at our house by 6pm. -my two brothers and their families along with my oldest son and his fiancé.
The problem was that everyone was coming from Toronto. They all left on time, but as luck would have it, traffic this night was different from all other nights. Each of them called to tell us they would be at least an hour late, and in fact we didn’t get started until close to 8pm. You can imagine what that does to the timing of a meal.
The second problem was that an hour before the appointed time, I was unable to connect to both of my children at the same time on the internet. I tried everything, but the signal was not good and I became very frustrated. Add to that, the fact that every five minutes, one of the families travelling in from Toronto called to say that they would be late…. very late in fact….. and I was wondering why on earth I had put in so much effort. Stan and I thought of sitting ourselves down at either end of the seder table and taking a picture to show the seder where no one came.
Someone was looking out for us though. At about 6:30pm I decided to try the connections again for the internet and it worked. I was very surprised because I had had so much trouble earlier, but pleased. We all chatted a bit and I kept going over to the ovens and turning the heat down lower.
By 7:15 our Bob and Rana and the girls arrived at the same time as my brother-in-law Howie, followed very quickly by James and Emily. Tom called to say he had taken a wrong turn and was now in Hamilton! We were so late already that it really didn’t matter. By the time we all sat down to the table it was well past 8pm. It was so wonderful to see everyone together.
All the women lit the candlesticks in front of them and said the bracha (blessing). Nathan in Montreal said the Kiddush (blessing over the wine) and we had 3 renditions of the 4 questions. The first was my nephew J, who was the youngest at the seder. The second was O and Z. The third was the newest soon-to-be member of our family, Emily, who has been teaching herself to read Hebrew. Awesome. This made the whole experience worthwhile.
We sang and enjoyed each other’s company until quite late. It was a wonderful evening. Throughout the seder, the kids in Calgary and Nathan in Montreal were there watching and participating or talking to us. I’m sure from their end it wasn’t as much fun, but from our point of view it helped us feel that the whole family was together on one of our most important holidays. When your family cannot all be there, this is definitely an option worth considering.
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