Pass the Horseradish

This weekend my friend E's mother taught me to fold linen napkins. We were at E and her French husband's apartment in Paris, preparing for a Passover seder for 18, and one of my jobs was to fold the napkins so that when picked up by the corner, they'd unfurl gracefully with one shake of the wrist.

I folded the napkins slowly, thoughtfully, memorizing each fold and seam as if I might never again be privy to instructions on how to fold properly. Meanwhile, I listened to E and her mother talk in family shorthand in the kitchen and tried desperately not to feel too sorry for myself. Even now, 2 1/2 years after my mother's death, there is nothing like the simple presence of someone else's mother to make me think all too much about the silver-polishing lessons and "Mom, do you think I should turn up the temperature on the salmon?" that I will never have; the mock complaining, as E's mother did, about schlepping from New Jersey two suitcases full of freshly made matzo balls, farfalle and mandel bread -- and bed and table linens from Marshalls -- that I will never endure.

All Saturday, as I helped cook, I watched E's interactions, both with her mother and with her husband. E and her husband are the sort who kiss unabashedly and unselfconsciously on street corners, in midsentence, and upon getting up from the table to fetch water from the kitchen. That night at the seder I watched their well-deserved pride in the new flat they've spent two years trying to buy, and watched their faces glow as friends -- me included -- commented in awed tones that we cannot believe we have friends who have a flat big enough for a table that seats 18 for dinner. I listened to them casually refer to the room I was staying in as "the baby's room" -- they don't have one yet -- and then catch each other's eye and smile.

I'm not an observant Jew, and this year's multiple languages -- English, Hebrew and French -- made it even easier than usual to let the words of the service wash over me without absorbing them. Except when we got to the eating of the horseradish, which symbolizes the bitterness of slavery and the bitterness of life. E's husband's mother -- a seder neophyte, and widow of nearly a year -- spread her matzo so thickly with the white horseradish that it brought tears to her eyes. She wiped her eyes, tried to smile, and said quietly to her son: "Life is too bitter."