Another one from the archives…
It’s done! Once again, this year, I've been putting it off and putting it off, and now, at last, it's done. It's a week before Purim, and the shemurah matzos have been ordered for the year.
“Mrs. Paquette, please?”
He always pronounces the name right, an oddity I can't help respecting.
My matzah man, Rabbi Aronov — he always refers to himself tersely as “Aronov”— has been calling for over a month, and I have been putting him off, not wanting to admit that Pesach is right around the corner again.
I told him I needed to speak to my parents, which was true, and then I told him I hadn't had a chance yet, which was true, and then I said I would call him back, which was true, and asked for an absolute latest deadline when I could phone him and squeak my order in under the wire. Almost up until Purim, he said, and I sighed with relief.
But still the deadline loomed, and tonight, when he calls me back, I finally take the plunge. I spoke to my mother last week. We talked about the seder, and there's not much more that I need to know.
“How much did I take last year?” I ask tonight, procrastinating still.
“Last year, six pounds,” he re cites, and I remember seeing his scrawled handwriting on the little index cards on which he keeps each family's records from year to year. “Two years ago, six pounds. Three years ago, four pounds.”
This will be my fifth Pesach alone In Toronto — the fifth since Elisheva Chaya was born and Jeremy told me