Sonia

It was the spring after Nana had died when my son came home full of curiosity. “Why don’t we get to pass over?” He asked. I looked up from the electric bill to meet with the inquisitiveness of his 9 year old eyes. “Alfi says that Jewish people are supposed to celebrate the end of slavery.”
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I didn’t know how to respond. We weren’t really Jewish. Or at least I hadn’t been raised Jewish. I’d been raised Catholic like my parents before me. Nana had been our only Jewish connection, but she’d left all that behind when she emigrated from Romania to Argentina then later to America. Or had she?
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“Maybe we can do something special that day.” I said dumbly.
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“It’s not just one day, Mom,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s a whole week.”
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“I know, I know,” I said. “Let me talk to your dad first.”
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Satisfied he went out to pet Pinky, our dog. My first instinct was to call Nana, but as I reached for the phone tears filled my eyes. I dialed my parents’ house instead.
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“Your father’s napping,” my mother said to me. “He’s the only one who can know.”
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It was true—the only part of Nana I had left was my father. I closed my eyes and prayed that he could share what he knew, but two years earlier he’d suffered a stroke that had taken his speech and much of his memory.
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In the morning I drove to my parents’ home. It was a quiet Saturday morning, the trees and flowers at the cusp of bloom. Mom worked in the garden while Dad sat with me for coffee. It had been a long time since Dad and I had spent time together just the two of us.
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“Her grandfather was Syrian and her mother was Romanian,” I said about Nana. “They followed the Sephardic traditions,” I continued but Dad could only offer a nod of agreement.
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Disappointed, I inclined my head. Dad sighed but then his eyes gleamed and I followed him to the basement. In a cedar box I found a few articles I had never seen: Nana’s passport stamped 1941, a colorful kerchief, a small diary with faded ink and the dried petals of a rose between its pages.
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“I can’t believe this it?” I quivered. “Nana’s gone forever.” Dad opened his arms and I sobbed into his shoulder. In some sense, I had lost him too. I asked him to try writing what he could remember. He smiled that he would and I drove home with the cedar box on my lap. I pulled over at the local library. As I was leaving with a stack of books about Jewish traditions, a colorful ribbon from the yard sale across the street caught my eye. It looked faintly familiar. I remembered the doll that Nana had helped me make when I was a girl, it sat slanted at the edge of a folding table with a tag that read $5. I dropped the books and ran toward it. A car honked at me but I didn’t stop.
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The following week I presented my son with the doll that I had made when I was about his age. In exchange for the kit Nana had traded some S & H green stamps she had collected, and we had embellished it with a blue, yellow, and red ribbon she had once worn in her hair.
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“It looks like Pinky chewed it up,” he winced.
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“What matters is the story behind it,” I said and while grinding carp and pike for the first time I told him the stories I had heard from Nana as a kid. As I watched her prepare gefilte for Good Friday and kishke for Pascua she told me of her childhood in Romania. My son and I fried potato meatballs and poured lentils into egg-drop soup for Holy Thursday like she had. And instead of confetti we hid a concoction of dried apricots and dates wrapped in wax paper inside painted eggshells just like Nana had done for us grandchildren to hunt on Easter Sunday.
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A few days later my son came home filled with delight. “Alfi says he wants to come to our house the next time we pass over.”