Thursday, April 24, 2008

Family History

It's funny, at least to me, that my kids are more attached to all sorts of "things" in the house than I am. All these "things" are part of their memories. I don't have the same feelings for "things" in my parents' home and never did.

When I look at my Passover closets I see a whole history of the almost 40 years we're married. At this point, I can't remember exactly when we got everything, but it's close.


Here's a dairy closet, above.

First we must honor the cups we bought Passover, 1971, in the SuperSol on Agron Street. We were living not far, in the Maon Betar, Old City Jerusalem. The plastic dishes were bought in NY, I think in the A&S (I think that's the name of the department store which used to be in the shopping center at the junction of Northern Blvd., Community Drive, Long Island.) It didn't cost much, since it was a display set and missing a couple of dinner plates. The soft orange cups, if I'm not mistaken, were bought in Bayit V'Gan, Jerusalem, for Passover, 1978, after we got back from England. I had to get lots of things, since we had a mob, including 3 kids of our own and 2 of my cousin's. Soft plastic were just right for the little ones. The UPP mugs were given out at the summer ETAI convention a few years ago. I think they were only for presenters, and I managed to get a few.


The blue and white dishes above and below are all meat.

The Corelle on the left may have had been brought to us by my parents or in-laws. We bought the white set on the right, one year when we had lots of guests. I think I bought the blue plastic that year we had a mob.


The heavy "china" and the large bowl were bought our very first Passover, 1971, in what was "Schwartz" department store on the corner of Ben Yehuda St., Jerusalem. The "china" tray with the tree was bought in London, either Passover, 1976 or 1977. The blue plastic cups are of the same vintage as the orange dairy ones. And I remember winning those funny wine glasses as a door prize at some synagogue event as a teen. They st in my parents' storage space until I was ready to take possession.

Since Passover is only one week a year, everything seems so new.

2 comments:

Leora said...

I can relate to the Pesach possessions. When my father moved closer to me two years ago, I inherited my mother's (z"l) Pesach china and her Pesach dairy dishes. So using them is very special for me.

Batya said...

I'm sure it is, leora. I don't know how it is where you are, but here more and more people use mostly disposables on Pesach and don't bother with large collections of dishes. I don't use them all any more, but it seems crazy to give them away.