Almost Passover

It's almost Passover (begins Friday evening the nineteenth), and my feelings are jumping like beans.

There is real, true rejoicing that I am free, free from bondage, free to wonder and worship and serve God.  These are the feelings the holiday is meant to evoke as we celebrate.  I don't always manage to feel them, but this year I really, truly do.  So there is rejoicing, and also wonder at the miracles God worked and continues to work.  (No, I don't believe the story happened, certainly not as written in the Bible.  Yes, I celebrate my freedom and worship of God, as symbolized in this story, anyway.)

There is also just "jumping bean excitement" over seeing my family.  For various reasons, my entire immediate family (father, mother, and brothers ages 29 and 22) still all lives together; I am the only one out on my own.  I love going home and seeing all of them at once.  This visit, I get the extra special, sweet opportunity to see my grandmother.  We talk on the phone almost every day; I am planning to go visit her, just me, this summer for 10 days.  She's 87 (No, that's not a typo!) and I want to soak up all the time with her that I can get.  She comes for Passover now, and this year she is bringing her significant other (not my grandfather, he died in summer 2016; yes, there was an entry on this blog about it).  It will be lovely to see her too.

Yet even with all these wonderful, positive feelings come worry and dread.  I still do not know what's happening with my school situation.  I got my rubric (chart with aspects of assignment, graded with numbers; in this case 1-4, with 4 being best and 1 being worst) for the lesson plan demonstration last night; strictly speaking numbers wise, I'm pretty sure I did not fail the assignment.  But the comments at the bottom were disastrous: ripped into my teaching and tore it apart.  If I were the Powers That Be in the department, seeing that, I would not keep me in the program.

I do not know where I will go or what I will do next if this program tells me to leave.  This was my dream, this is my passion, and I won't leave it forever.  I feel fierce determination; I will eventually be a teacher, come what may.

Side note: I recently decided that on each trip, I will showcase one type of kippah.  For this trip, for example, I have my hand embroidered hats (graduation presents, one from high school and one from college, very much my fanciest kippot) to wear to the actual Passover sedarim (fancy, ritual meals on the first two nights of the holiday), but other than that I am only wearing suede.  I have the pastel blue one with silver border, from this past weekend's Bat Mitzvah, on my head right now; over the course of the trip I will also wear navy with a silver border, dark purple, pink, and royal blue with a red-and-silver border.  The purple and pink come from my own Bat Mitzvah.  I think on my next trip I will just bring my blue stack, and wear only blue kippot for the entirety of the trip.

Passover, here I come! It's almost here, and I can't wait!