Like many Jewish people who are originally from the East Coast, I make a yearly pilgrimage home to the DC area for the first night seder every year. I’ve missed it only twice in my life, once my freshman year of college when I though going to my friend Steve’s parents’ house would be an acceptable alternative (it wasn’t), missing the one and only time my mom’s cousin Nancy hosted in CT; and once when Passover was so late in the year as to be only 2 weeks before final exams and I stayed in Colorado to volunteer at the Hillel seder to make it what I needed while having time to study, missing the only time seder was held at my grandparents’ retirement McMansion in Solomon, Maryland.
This year, as we’ve done since I graduated from college, Ben and I split Passover between our families. This is an awesome way to do it for many reasons, Shabbat with my parents is spiritually very unsatisfying (it may as well be Sunday, no one there cares), seeing our families at least once a year in their native habitats reminds us how much we’ve become citizens of the People’s Republic of Boulder, and most of all we don’t have to kasher our kitchen if we won’t be home to use it!
The first night of Passover this year was on a Friday night, meaning that there were TWO shabbat dinners during Passover this year. This was awesome for us because we were able to spend the first night with my family, the second night at a Kehilat Shalom’s second night community seder, and then travel up to the Boston area for a few days to sight see and spend Shabbat with Ben’s family.
If you’re counting that means that we flew out to DC the Wednesday before Passover started, and up to Boston a week later, flying back to Colorado on Sunday, after the end of Passover. We were gone for 10 days. My limit for family. I usually have a 5 day tolerance for family, but we were able to extend it to 7 days by staying in the basement and letting gramma stay in my room. It is MUCH quieter in the basement.
Why were we in DC for so long, you might ask. Because Ben gave his first talk in anticipation of looking for a PostDoc position this coming December! He spoke at NIST Gaithersburg, the main location of which the Boulder labs are just a branch. He had an awesome backwards commute fro McLean, up 495 and out 270 to super-suburban Maryland. I’m not sure if could be happy living out there, but I’m sure we could find somewhere to bunker down for 2-4 if he ends up working there. Other programs he’s interested in are at NIST Boulder, Yale, Harvard, and MIT. My husband is no slouch!
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