Page 54 - HaMizrachi #28 Pesach USA 2021

GENERAL INTEREST

Chava Willig Levy

Pesach in August

pril. Another year, another The Milkshake The Pencil
Pesach Seder. The guests, the
Agoblets, the wine, the food, the I drew my guests’ attention to a delicate The next item on our Seder plate paid
tribute to another man, one whose name
glass goblet filled with a non-dairy choc-
Seder plate, the questions, the answers. olate milkshake. As we sipped that sweet I never knew. Pointing to a pencil on
Frankly, it’s arduous, but I wouldn’t have beverage, my bittersweet saga continued which was embossed the word “Breath-
it any other way. to unfold. taking!”, I spoke of a respiratory therapist
In the midst of this year’s Pesach pande- My father rarely mentioned the who stopped by to assess my vital lung
monium, I find myself remembering the after-midnight call, several days after capacity in 1959, recording his findings
Seder we hosted 20, not 12, months ago. my diagnosis was confirmed. “Mr. on a clipboard. At one point, he erased
It too was replete with guests, goblets, Willig, your daughter is having difficulty something, puckering his lips to blow
wine, food and a Seder plate. But oddly breathing, so we’ve placed her in an iron the shavings away. “Oh, please,” I begged,
enough, although there were answers, lung.” That chilling sentence was the “let me do that!” “Sure,” he replied. I blew
there were no questions – unless you only memory fragment through which with all my might. Not a single shaving
count the unspoken ones. I could relive that crisis. moved. The therapist nodded empath-
ically. “Yeah,” he said, “this is really hard
So many of my loved ones were there: Then, in 2002, a miracle happened. I to do.”
brothers and sisters-in-law, nieces and ran into a woman named Helen, who
nephews, cousins, friends and, last but told me that in August 1955, when I had I invited my guests to take the pencil
not least, my husband and children. contracted polio, she was the student adjacent to their plate, write a word on
They all joined me for an event I’d been nurse assigned to me. I was overjoyed. their place card, erase it and blow the
anticipating for years: my polio Seder, I begged Helen, “Tell me everything you shavings away with all their might. As
mine scattered across the table, I felt an
commemorating – no, celebrating – my remember.” And she did. Her concluding exhilaration that truly took my breath
50th polio anniversary. words were the most precious: “Most of
all, I remember your father. He came to away.
e see you at least once a day. Soon after
you arrived, you began to have difficulty Beets and Mashed Potatoes
August 13, 1955 breathing and swallowing, so we had It was time to eat the maror, the bitter
A mere four months earlier, Dr. Jonas to put you in an iron lung. Your father herbs, and remember Pharaoh. Blond,
Salk had announced that his polio vac- would arrive every day with a milkshake pale, stout and unsmiling, Miss Gilles-
cine worked. As journalist Linda Eller- and a straw. Helping you to take a few pie, RN, was the Pharaoh of Goldwater
sips was a complicated business. He
bee put it, “We actually saw a disease had to reach into one of the iron lung’s Memorial Hospital. One afternoon, she
die.” But over the next four months, it portholes, position the milkshake near marched over to me, my lunch tray in
was my life that hung in the balance. your mouth, and wait until the iron lung hand. On it was a plate of breaded fish,
mashed potatoes and sliced beets the
50 years later, we gathered round the exhaled. Those few intermittent seconds color of dried blood. Eyeing it warily, I
table to retell and relive my passage from offered the only chance to get some cru- announced, “I’ll have fish and mashed
death’s door back to life. The polio Seder cial nutrients into your system. Your potatoes. No beets, please.” “Suit your-
plate, like its Pesach counterpart, occu- father’s gentle patience was a marvel to self,” she muttered. A spoon loaded
pied center stage. Each item adorning behold.” with mashed potatoes zoomed toward
it was a catalyst, propelling us from As we each sipped our milkshakes at my mouth, which obediently opened.
August 1955 to the present, from slavery the polio Seder, my father’s love was as Seconds later, I gagged. Beets, buried
to freedom, not once but many times palpable as it surely had been 50 years moments earlier under the mashed
over. earlier. potatoes, spewed forth, landing (I’d like

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