Not A Peep Out Of You!
Passover in North Miami Beach, 1982
I’m 21, and Dad and I are headed to Florida. It’s almost Pesach1, and we’re going to Nanny and Poppa’s two seders. We fly down from New York, an easy flight, it takes a couple of hours at most.
Poppa is waiting for us at the gate. It’s 1982, almost 20 years before 9/11 and the onset of intense security at airports. A time when loved ones, or not such loved ones, could escort and pick up a traveler in person, and not have to hover near baggage claim, or circle around and around in cars waiting for their people to emerge. We deplane and he’s standing there, unlit cigar clenched between his teeth––damp from chewing––his still mostly brown hair neatly combed back, a dab of Vitalis helps hold it in place. It’s not as thick as it used to be.
We get into the latest model of his Cadillac Seville. He’s never driven a different make. A true-blue Caddy guy, he swaps them out every couple of years for a fresh one. He worked hard his whole life, and sacrificed more than I’ll ever know, but he treats himself to this one luxury. The car makes the man. It’s as clean as if he’d just driven it home from the showroom that day, but stale cigar smoke clings to us, a pine tree-shaped air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror. The AC is blasting, and I wish I had a sweatshirt. I’m on the skinny side these days and I chill easily. We crawl through the airport traffic to get to the highway. The Jewish population of New York is descending on the Sunshine State in droves. His driving isn’t as good as it used to be. We coast onto the shoulder several times. He’s not as sharp as he once was. I catch my breath a little, but quietly. I don’t want him to know I’m concerned, no, terrified. I look at my father for confirmation that I’m not overreacting and catch him grimacing, and it seems like he’s trying to stay calm, too. I close my eyes, and hope for the best. There are a lot of old drivers––Methuselah old––on the roads of North Miami Beach.
Arriving at their condo, and walking through the front door, Nanny hears us and bursts from the kitchen wearing one of her many aprons. She’s prepping the food for the seders. I don’t know anywhere else on the planet that smells as good as her kitchen. The scent of brisket roasting in the oven, the sweet and savory smell of her chopped liver, and so many sauteed onions, the heavenly aroma wafts around us. I’ve never had chopped liver better than the liver Nanny makes. We get hugs, and she pinches my cheeks, and my father’s, between her schmaltzy2 fingers until it hurts. “Oy, Sidnele, oy Nancele, you should come more often. We hardly ever see you!” She’s already planning our next visit, armed with guilt projectiles for the future, ignoring that we’re standing right in front of her.
Poppa leaves to drive to downtown Miami to pick up Aunt Paulie. Paulie is Nanny’s oldest sister. He’ll get her and bring her back so she can stay for both seders. She’s never driven and this is easiest for everyone. My grandmother announces that I’ll sleep on the pull-out sofa in the den, sharing the bed with Paulie. I’m horrified at the idea of sleeping in a bed with my very old aunt. She’s about 117––give or take ten years––and her body is bony and frail. Not an ounce of fat on her. Her hair is thin, wisps of white cotton candy, styled carefully in a biweekly wash and set, she can’t afford to do it more often. She can barely see, her cataracts are thick, and her eyes are rheumy. I imagine being in bed with her while she sleeps and farts intermittently, snoring too, her dentures in a glass by the bed. In my mind, I think the worst, she’ll die in the night, I know she will. I’ll wake up next to a corpse. Don’t get me wrong. I love her, she’s sweet and kind, and kind of simple. When I tell her things about my life her reply is always the same, “Oh yeeeeeeeeeeeaaahhhhh? No kiddddink?” She’d stretches out the “yeah” as long as she can, it rises to a crescendo, and punctuates her disbelief or wonder with “No Kiddink!” the “K” at the end, stepped on hard. You’d never mistake that K for a G. Her Yiddish/Polish accent is still thick after more than 60 years of living in America. She talks incessantly about her favorite card game called Kaluki. Every time she sees me, she promises to teach me how to play. It never happens, though. I relish her pleasure as she describes the game. She tells me it’s like Rummy. I have no idea what that means. I think it would be lovely to get so much joy out of something as simple as a card game. I guess I feel that way about Scrabble, but there’s no one to play with in this group, though I can sometimes rustle up a game at the pool. Everyone in my father’s family plays cards or Mah Jongg. Poppa plays pinochle, Nanny plays Canasta and Mah Jongg with “the girls.” I assume Aunt Paulie plays her beloved Kaluki with someone, at least I hope so!
My eyes dart to my father’s, and he sees my terror at the thought of bedding down with Paulie. Thank God he understands. He’s going to be sleeping on one of the sofas in the living room. I say to Nanny, “Uh, no, I want to sleep with Daddy.” She begins to object, and Dad cuts in, “Ma, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” She tucks her chin, and grits her teeth. Well, that didn’t take long. Conflict in the air, we brace ourselves for whatever might come next. Surprisingly, she lets it go.
The first seder is the next day. Nanny says, “Go put your suits on and go down to the pool. You don’t have a pool in New York. There’s Coppertone in the bathroom. You’re too pale.” My grandmother and my father choose baby oil for baking in the sun. They don’t believe in SPF anything.
Nanny and Poppa are so proud of the life they’ve made since they retired. It’s everything they ever wanted. They even started playing golf–– just 9 holes––and catch the early bird special for dinner at 3pm after they go to the course. It’s cheaper then and they’re on a budget.
We have an early dinner (what else?) and then settle in with Nanny and Poppa for hours of stupid TV, and an assortment of chazerei––that’s Yiddish for trash, she uses it to describe junk food. Raisinets, Goobers, Sno Caps, and marshmallow twists coated in chocolate served rock hard, directly from her freezer. They are all, of course, kosher for Passover. She also has candy fruit slices sprinkled with sugar. But we’re not allowed to eat those until dessert at the first seder. And oh, the macaroons!
The first night sleeping in the living room is torture. Dad and I pull cushions off the couch, creating makeshift beds on the floor, tightly wrapping flat sheets around the plastic-covered cushions to try and hold them together. Sleeping is impossible for both of us. Every time one of us moves, we hear the crackle of the plastic. We lie on the floor in the dark for at least a couple of hours, struggling to sleep, before my father gives up, gets up, lights a cigarette, and turns on a lamp. He goes through his toiletry kit, looking for something, pulling all kinds of skincare products out, mostly Clinique for Men. He’s vain about his looks. A triumphant smile on his face, he finds what he’s looking for, and with great ceremony he pulls out a bottle of Ativan and holds it in the air. We decide to split one to start. The tablets are small and white, and unscored. It feels strange––doing prescription drugs––or any drugs, with my dad, but we’re both desperate. We sneak into the kitchen to get Nanny’s paring knife to do the job, and wash our doses down with shots of seltzer. Poppa loves his old seltzer bottles and buys CO₂ chargers so he can make his own. The guy makes a damn good chocolate egg cream soda. Eventually we fall asleep.
The day of the first seder is bedlam from the minute we wake up. So many preparations still to get done. Nanny moves through the apartment, her apron over her nightgown, armed with her feather duster, her face still slathered in Oil of Olay from the night before. She swats at imagined dust on every surface. She dusts every day before she boils water for her Sanka. The condo is always immaculate. The cushions go back on the couch, the coffee table is whisked out of the way, and comfy chairs get moved to corners of the room. The tables and folding chairs come out, and Dad and I set the table for the main event before we have breakfast. The table stretches from one end of the room to the other, at least 15 feet long, a royal banquet on the horizon. There’ll be 25 guests in attendance plus Elijah3, but he doesn’t take up too much space.
Nanny and Aunt Paulie are in the kitchen working on the meal, but they stop to make Dad matzo brie4, his favorite, not mine. I just have Sanka. Ick. Nanny orders Paulie around, treating her like a child, even though Nanny is the youngest of 3 sisters. Middle sister Molly hasn’t arrived yet to help. I don’t think Paulie even hears her anymore. It’s always been this way. They move around each other, doing a dance they’ve done all their lives. They feed their family. I don’t think it’s a love language for them as much as a maternal calling, or their response to a built-in expectation. It’s just what women do.
My father and I find an empty spot in the day during the hectic preparations and borrow the Caddy. We drive to the nearest drugstore, a Walgreen’s. He forgot to bring his bottle of Maalox, and he’s sure to need a few swigs tonight for his ulcer, after the heavy, brown and beige food orgy. It’s such a relief to get out of the house for a bit. The tension rises as each hour goes by. As we’re walking the aisles of the drugstore, we spot the same display at the same time and look at each other, smiling slightly wicked grins.
He whispers, leaning in close to my ear, “let’s get some,” as if his mother’s in the next aisle, spying on us. He gets a devilish look on his face. I duck my head, and whisper back, “But it’s not pesadik.” That’s the Yiddish word for “kosher for Passover.” I glance around too, my guilt activated, even though I know she’s not there. We make the buy, and return to mayhem.
The relatives arrive, the old and not so old. Sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles, the greats and the not-so-greats. Seated at the head of the table, my grandfather conducts the seder. He takes this job very seriously, and it goes on forever. He reads it all in Hebrew, but I don’t think he knows what any of it means. It’s all rote. At the other head of the table, my Uncle Abe, my grandfather’s oldest brother, holds court, ignoring the rituals his little brother performs every year, year in, year out. Uncle Abe’s end of the table is wildly engaged in a discussion about their latest favorite television shows. Occasionally when it gets too loud, my grandfather looks at Abe with piercing eyes and growls at him to shut up. A quiet lull follows for about 30 seconds, and then the Abe contingency revs up again. I must admit, Abe’s followers are a lot more fun than Max’s. A much livelier group. I’m a little torn about my loyalties. I don’t understand Hebrew, but I don’t want Poppa to feel abandoned. My dad and I are sitting at the center of the table, so we can shift our attention easily.
It bums me out that the women are mostly in the kitchen all night, heating food, plating food, and running food out to the table, serving each person individually. My inner feminist is angry at the men for not helping, angry at the women for putting up with it, and only a little angry at myself for not helping. It’s the principle. I just can’t get up and perpetuate this nonsense, but I’m not brave enough to say something about it. I know I’d be laughed out of the room if I did.
By 11:30, all the guests are gone. Paulie changes into her nightgown and gives me a slightly juicy goodnight kiss after she’s taken her dentures out. She gets into her great big bed that she doesn’t have to share with anyone. My grandparents retire to their bedroom, and it’s suddenly calm and peaceful in North Miami Beach.
Dad and I reconstruct our makeshift beds and sit down, in our pajamas, ready for our next course. We’re both stuffed to the gills, but we can’t pass up the opportunity to be really bad. Do some mischief, break the rules. First, we decide we each get a whole Ativan that night. Then, silent drumroll, I quietly unzip my backpack, and reach inside, gently plucking our purchase out of my bag. It’s one of those years when Passover and Easter fall closely together on the calendar. When we were in the drugstore, we saw a huge display of Cadbury crème eggs and marshmallow Peeps. They are DEFINITELY NOT kosher for Passover5.
We look at each other, smiling, and giggling softly, our shoulders hunched up around our ears. It’s all we can do not to burst out laughing. We’re like little kids about to get away with something really awful. I dole out our contraband very deliberately, almost ceremoniously, as we prepare for our Christian feast. Two eggs for each of us. One for tonight, and one saved for tomorrow, if we can control ourselves. We unpeel the multi-colored pastel foil in unison, slowly, slowly, and lower our heads as if to receive communion. We nibble at the chocolate and savor the moment we get to the creamy sugar yolk. The Angel of Death did not seem to object.
The next night we do it all over again.
Pesach is Passover, for those of you not in the know!
Schmaltz is rendered chicken fat, my dad liked it slathered on rye bread with slices of raw onion. Not my thing. Never was, never will be.
Elijah the Prophet. At a specific point in the seder, the front door is opened for him to enter. There’s always a glass of wine on the table and an empty chair, just for him. He’s the harbinger of the arrival of the Messiah for the redemption of the world.
A concoction of matzo soaked in egg and over-scrambled, served sweet or savory. I’ve never appreciated this Passover delicacy(?), and never will.
I just found out that the inventor and manufacturer of Peeps was a nice Jewish man who died in 2023. He did a lot of mitzvahs (good works) in his 98 years. A real mensch!
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Loved the description of your family tradition and your relatives. Nobody in my family retired to Florida, but stayed put in Virginia and North Carolina. Our seders were shorter because my great grandfathers were already gone, and my grandparents were emancipated from the ways of the old country, and committed to being as American as possible. They spoke Yiddish with a southern accent. Nevertheless, I dreaded the seder, how bored I was, and the too hot bowls of matzo ball soup, until I learned the four questions and was allowed to perform them.
The angel of death not objecting. Elijah not taking up space. Nanny’s apron over her nightgown, and so many other great details that bring your relatives to life—not least your impish father. Great piece, Nancele!