This and that

 So my favorite retro candy store was featured on ESPN.  Why?  Because Bobb Howard’s is one of the few places you can buy a Reggie bar.  Reggie bars were named in honor of Reggie Jackson, who earned the nickname “Mr. October” when he played for the NY Yankees in 1978.  You’ll recall I bought a Reggie bar when we visited the store at the end of February.

I was also able to get my favorite hard candy at Bobb Howard’s.

I noticed they also have 

Those were my grandmother’s favorite.  Today would have been her birthday.

We don’t know exactly when my grandmother was born.  She was born in a small town in what was then part of Austria and is now part of Poland.  We think she was born in 1902.  But European Jewish communities at the turn of the century didn’t keep many birth records, and what few records existed were likely destroyed in the Holocaust. It wasn’t until she emigrated to America that my grandmother acquired official documents that showed her age, and her various documents showed three different years of her birth.  She admittedly lied on her marriage license, making herself younger, because she didn’t want her husband’s cousin to know how old she really was. My grandparents got married at City Hall, but my great-grandfather would not let my grandmother live with my grandfather until they had a religious ceremony a month later.

Tomorrow would have been my parents’ wedding anniversary. My parents were teachers.  Originally they planned to get married at the end of June 1959 and honeymoon in Europe.  But my mother lived in the Bronx and my father lived in suburban Long Island, and all the commuting got to him.  That year Easter Sunday was March 29, but due to quirks in the Jewish calendar Passover was at the end of April.  They decided to get married Easter Sunday, honeymoon in upstate New York during spring break, and then take the European tour in the summer.  But … well, I was born in February 1960 (11 months after they married — people were counting on their fingers); the European tour did not happen, because in those days pregnant ladies did not fly off to foreign lands. They didn’t get to travel to Europe until my father retired in the late 1980’s.

Tomorrow will be a difficult day, my father passed away in 2015 and my mother passed last summer.  And then Passover next week …

Our Seder table will be small this year.  We will all be missing my mother.  Our Seder in 2016 was bittersweet, we all heard my father’s voice in our heads as we read the Haggadah.  

But at least we will all be together.  Not like 2020.  There’s nothing like commemorating your ancestors surviving a plague while trying to avoid a modern plague.  Was that really our life only three years ago?

It’s also my first Passover since my Celiac diagnosis.  I’m finding a lot of substitutes, like gluten free matzo and matzo balls, but there are foods I simply won’t be able to have.  Sigh.

And there will be a second Seder at Drew’s house, with our friends.  

So yes, I am going to celebrate the holiday.  I’m looking forward to it.

And I even found the candy my grandmother bought every Passover.

I haven’t had these in years, can’t wait to taste them again.  It’s going to be a sweet Passover.