Grace in Small things #11

Ceder Part Two was with my father's side of my family.

1)  I was voluntold to make charoset for the second Passover ceder.  I've never done it before.  I downloaded several recipes from the internet, and then combined them to make my own version.  It turned out so well that people actually took second helpings.  Success!

2)  My 96-year-old grandfather still has enough of his marbles intact to say the Hebrew blessing for the ceremonial wine.  He mumbled his way through it with sincere sentiment, in his gravelly/whispery old-man voice, and my heart swelled.

3)  My father's cousin, who I haven't seen in many years, was at the ceder with her husband.  She brought photos of my grandparents as a young married couple, standing with my grandmother's parents at the door of their grocery store - the family business - in 1942.  My grandmother was a pretty lady.  And her father was very dapper with his moustache, wearing a white fedora with a black band.

4)  My grandfather used to belong to a "gang" called the Anti-Snitch Cats.  They build a clubhouse in a field, but hobos took it over as a permanent residence.

5)  I bummed a ride partway home with a car full of "the kids": five of us in my generation.  I'm the oldest and the youngest of us is 23.  We turned up the radio and sang along with Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer".  Squashed shoulder-to-shoulder in the backseat with a cousin from Hamilton who I only get to see a few times a year, I felt that total comfort-among-friends that becomes rare after university, when everyone goes their separate ways and gets really busy.  Good times.