The Compleat And Actual Adventures of Marcella White Campbell

Passover is almost over.

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For the first time since 2001 or thereabouts, I did not host a Passover Seder. (I attended two seders, both of which were lovely.) I did not cook an unforgivably unpalatable kosher-for-passover dessert, nor did I set a glass of water beside Elijah’s cup for Miriam, nor did I explain the significance of an orange on the Seder plate. Thanks to the kindness of others, I have eaten brisket and matzo ball soup and charosets both Ashkenazi and Sephardic.

(I did make chopped liver and matzo balls with gribenes. I’m not dead yet.)

It is six days into Passover. This is always the point at which I begin to complain in an unseemly manner about the absence of bread in my life. I miss bread. I miss pizza. I miss sushi.

And, yet. There have been beautiful things this Passover. I watched my daughter chant the Four Questions in perfect Hebrew (with perfect pitch) for three generations of her family. I learned the Modeh Ani morning prayer by heart. I ran five miles and stood among the ruins of a millionaire’s estate looking over the Pacific Ocean. I ate at Contigo, and, though I could not spread the briny-sweet cured anchovies on bread, I consumed every morsel of fresh Dirty Girl strawberries with sweetened crème fraîche and rhubarb gelée.

In short, I have had the best Passover of my life.

I thought, when I began my Jewish journey a decade ago, that Passover was Jewish Lent, a mortifying of the flesh, a kind of fast to achieve holiness. Passover, this year, has been, instead, a crystallization of Jewish time. Things moved more slowly. I ate less. I ate more carefully. I ran along the ocean in San Pedro to an old lighthouse and just missed seeing dolphins. I lit Shabbat candles. I sat in warm sand with new friends. I said a prayer of thanks for my first morning breath.

Tomorrow night, when I taste my first bread in seven days, I will not be sorry. But I will, I think, be grateful.