March madness

March Madness isn't only about Basketball (go Horns!). The whole month has an aura of lunacy about it. Purim caps off the month's nuttiness with drinking, eating, dressing up, and a big, noisy ruckus. This year, Purim was followed by Pi day (3.14), a little known, but geekily fun celebration of the most famous mathematical calculation. The day after is the historical Ides of March (beware!), notable for the famous assassination of Caesar. My niece's birthday (not a national holiday...yet) comes right after, followed by my favorite March indulgence, St. Patrick's day, which I celebrate, not as an orthodox Jew, but as a woman with a useless degree in Irish History. And bundled up in there somewhere, is a special celebration all our own, our anniversary.

March goes out, not like a lamb, but like a neurotic OCD psych patient, in the ultimate expression of insanity: Passover preparations.

All of this revelry and self-flagellation occurs against the multiple personalities of Chicago weather - 70 degrees one day, 30 the next.

I love all of these celebrations. I love the baking and costume shopping and playful pageantry of Purim. And as much as I complain about it, there is something cathartic about Passover cleaning and cooking. The spiritual metaphors are cliched, but only because they're true. The process of cleaning out the nooks and crannies of my kitchen, separating the good from the bad, the clean from the unclean, the unleavened from the big and fluffy, are all part of a journey figuring out what's important in life. What can we get by without for a week? It takes real spiritual fortitude to learn the lesson of freedom amidst the servitude of Passover preparations.

And like most important journeys, the first step is the hardest. I will spend weeks just thinking about, fretting over, and organizing my cleaning. I talk about it with my husband, stress about it in the shower, and ponder purchases as I rush past the Passover section of the grocery store.

My son finally asked me when we were going to start cleaning. I told him that I had to make a plan of attack.

"Attack?" He asked, puzzled. "What do we need a plan of attack for?"

I'm sure my eyes flashed as I responded, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically: For the war on...chametz! I know it sounds over-the-top, but I'm telling you, it's getting ugly out there. People are swarming the grocery stores already, grabbing the essentials before they disappear. I haven't even figured out what my essentials are, other than matzah. I was in the grocery store today, and I commented to a wild-eyed woman that I hadn't even begun to think about Passover. She looked at me with a mix of disgust and pity.

"Passover's right around the corner!"

But if I'm too caught up on matzah and charoset, I might miss the opportunity to celebrate the rotundity of the fourteenth of March. I might forget to pay homage to my favorite Irish authors, James Joyce, J.M. Synge, W.B Yeats, Sean O'Casey, and Flann O'Brien over a nice cuppa Irish tea and biscuits.

I know, I know, I'm being a complete hypocrite. Just a month ago I was haughtily proclaiming that Orthodox Jews don't "do saints", when the truth is that I do "do saints"; at least one fifth century saint who was kidnapped by Irish bandits from his home in Roman Britain, only to return to convert the pagan island. If that wasn't a big enough deal, he is also credited for ridding Ireland of snakes, inventing the shamrock, and discovering U2.

I don't "wear the green" or march in parades. I don't even drink beer. But in my own small way, I acknowledge the day the whole world celebrates a small country I once called a home away from home. A country that is both bitterly anti-Israel, and fiercely proud of its Jewish Heritage.

James Joyce once joked that the Irish never persecuted the Jews, they just didn't let them in. Yet, years ago I was treated to a half hour long discourse on the history of Jews in Ireland by an Irish cab-driver! I learned about the two Jewish Lord Mayors of Dublin, the Irish President of Israel and his father, the first Chief rabbi of Israel. And I got a quick lesson on Jewish representation in Ireland's Parliament, the Dail.

So much for Joyce's quip.

Raising a cup of tea to my spirited adventures of long ago is about as close to excitement as I get these days. March has become more maddening than madness. I'm happy for the opportunity to take my focus off of the P-word. These minor celebrations are a small but welcome respite.

So I'll go ahead and eat round foods on Pi day. I'll raise a toast to Eire on St. Paddy's. I probably won't wear a toga on the Ides of March, but I may get my husband to feed me grapes while I'm reclining on the couch!

And for our anniversary, well, we'll think of something.

Let the madness begin!