If You Serve It, They Will Come

Another in an endless series of blurry mishpocha pix.

The three noshing rules of Rosh Hashanah: Kugel. Brisket. Chicken. If you serve it, they will come, and by them, I mean the peeps who show up expecting to fress. It's been a hectic couple of days for the SJG, a little tiring, a little hard on the lower back. Maybe it's been the same for you. The schlepping of groceries, the prepping, the marinating, the cooking, and the après-fress cleanup. Who knew it could be so exhausting? As I kid, I selfishly didn't give it a thought. The food just appeared on the plate. It's possible that somewhere in my child brain, I knew someone I loved, my grandma, my mom, my aunt, had cooked up a storm, but that's the extent of it. Then one day the universe said, "Due to circumstances beyond our control, it's your turn to cook, mazel tov," and just like that, I inherited various holiday feasts, and oy, such a revelation of "oh, so that's what's involved?" I'm honored and I love doing it, but if I don't kvetch, what's my reason for being?



Of course, one of the things I obsess over the most is the tripping. For this, I blame longtime hubby's elderly yet hilarious 93-year-old aunt, what with the blunt statements that roll off her tongue, the discussions about what to do with her future lottery winnings, and by the way, what did you do to your hair? Years ago, she tripped on the leg of a chair and went boom. No bones were broken, always a good thing, but the fear of her or someone else tripping at the palatial estate remains.

This explains why I'm careful with the chair placement and always moving abandoned shoes and sandals deposited by the millennials. On Sunday, I said, "Someone falls, you're paying the legal fees when we get sued." Yet with all my obsessing, the one who took a shoe-related tumble before anyone showed up was longtime hubby. The fix-it man just loves to get up on a ladder, this time to replace a light in the powder room. My daughter-in-law found him on the floor. I heard the scream and came running down the stairs. The bottom of his Nikes slipped and down he went, denting the wall with his manly, aging body. Don't worry, he's okay, at least he says he is, a little sore, limping a bit. Something tells me he'll be back on a ladder soon. It could've been worse, and thank God it wasn't. L'Shana Tovah!

And now he has something new to fix.