Last night, Jess and I made the best of things, setting up a seder for just the two of us on our living room floor:

Though we had longer haggadot, and even some shorter ones, yesterday morning my mother sent along a Coronavirus-updated version of Shoshana Silberman’s A Family Haggadah, which we had used in my childhood.  And, somehow, that seemed like the right choice.

So, occasionally bolstering with prayers (like birkat hamazon) and songs (whether chad gadya, or ‘Take Us Out of Egypt” [to the tune of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”]) and readings pulled from other books, we made our way through at a moderate pace, stopping to round up the ceremonial items I’d forgotten to bring out initially, or to pull various items out of the oven, or to go off on weird conversational tangents that had nothing to do with Passover at all until we remembered what we were doing and circled back to the seder.

We opted against opening our hall door for Elijah, singing out the open window instead.  And, though uniformly delicious, our menu was a bit less than traditional, working with the abridged ingredients we’d actually been able to round up.  Still, all in, I’d call it a great success.

We’re repeating tonight, this time with my parents (and possibly other family members?) on Zoom. And, yes, l’shana haba’ah and everything.  But, honestly, even in the midst of Coronavirus and lockdown and whatever else, I’d say this year, right here, is already pretty excellent, too.