“An only kid, and only kid, my father bought for 2 zuzim. And only kid. Chad Gadya.”
This was the last song that we sang at the Passover Seder when I was a child, growing up. It was my favorite song to sing. Maybe that’s because it was the end, and I could sing that poem while eating dessert, of Joyva Ring Jells and Bartons Mints, macaroons and chocolate covered Matzah. But really, I liked it, because of the ladder style of the poem, and the way I could recite the last stanza all in one breath.
It would be a long time, before the real meaning of Chad Gadya would come back to me, in a new way.
I was the only kid, stuck in the middle of my parent’s mess. Their anger wasn’t always directed at me. Sometimes it was. Like when my dad and I were riding bicycles one day in the neighborhood. Not looking where I was going, I nearly whapped my head on a mailbox, but dodged it just in time.
“You stupid girl!” my dad yelled.
When we got home, and ran inside, ashamed, and hid in my room.
The, one day, my parents fighting and arguing got so bad. I was in the 5th grade. I was in my bedroom, and I thought that I was going to snap. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take of listening to this, so I ran out into the living room and tried to break it up!
“Stop! Stop fighting! You’re going to hurt yourself!”
“Oh please!” my mother snapped back. “we give you everything. What you do possibly have to complain about!”
But for the most part, they directed their anger at each other, and I was stuck in the middle of the mess. The only kid, making myself smaller and smaller.
I love the little kid's experience of the closing of the seder, loving the song for its structure and also b/c it meant dessert! And then the desription of being stuck in the middle of the "mess." In one piece we get to see beyond the appearance of childhood into what she is really having to deal with.
ReplyDeleteI love this piece: the song, the Seder, the father's contempt for the little girl, the child in the middle of the fighting parents, then the song again. Really quite wonderful!
ReplyDeleteYes, I really liked this a lot too. Especially the connection of a traditional song to a much more contemporary situation. Little seems to change over the years, in that the kid, more often than not, winds up either in the middle of the mess or at lowest end of the family totem pole.
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