Passover in The Desert

Originally published March 27, 2013

Palm Desert, that is. Actually, we’re in Palm Springs, which seems to be the slightly poorer cousin of Palm Desert, which is 30 minutes south of here. In a very risky, non-Knudsen-like move, Dave and I at last year’s Neveh Shalom auction bid on — and won — a week-long stay in a Palm Springs condo. The risky part was that while the fantastic pool (complete with two slides) was in the photo projected on the screen during bidding, the facility itself and the room we’d be staying in were not. On Sunday, upon walking into our unit here — # 3236 — Dave turned to me and said, “That’s the last time the Knudsens buy something sight-unseen.”

The disposal didn’t work, nor did the dishwasher. The A/C operates at a decibel level slightly lower than an airplane taking off. The kitchen (and bathroom) is stocked with exactly four — or less — of everything: plates, utensils, glassware. The “less” part included the one glass baking dish, the single serving piece, the two minuscule packets of dishwasher detergent. And, in the powder room, it had on hand two rolls of toilet paper and two sets of towels. How long do you think it took our family of four to race through the TP rolls?

On Monday, erev Pesach, I began preparing for our Seder for which my in-laws, Diane and Clif, and Dave’s grandmother, Tudi, would join us. The three of them had been in a rental house in Palm Desert since the first of the month and don’t return to Portland ’till early April. The girls were thrilled they’d see Grandma, Grandpa, and Tudi during our vacation and were very excited the family accepted our invitation to join us for the first night of Passover.

From Portland, I’d brought the “Seder plate” Alyssa had made in preschool at age-2; the “plate” is a round, laminated piece of construction paper that has glued to it pictures of all the items one puts on a traditional Seder plate: a lamb shank, a roasted egg, parsley, maror, charoset, and matza. Flat, it survived quite well our travels from Portland to SoCal. The matza, however, arrived a little crumbly. Funny, though, it didn’t seem to effect its taste. I’d also brought a bottle of Manishewitz, kosher-for-Passover peppermint paddies, small candles to light at the beginning of our service, an assortment of colorful kippot, and some props depicting certain of the 10 plagues that we’ve used since the girls were very young: frogs, of course, as well as Band-Aids to signify boils, and small plastic creatures retrieved from a German Advent calendar — of all things — to represent beasts.

That day, Dave golfed with his dad; us girls expected him and his family to arrive at about 6 p.m. So we spent our day at the Living Desert, billed as both a botanical garden and zoo. I feared the word ‘zoo’ immediately would throw the girls into paroxysms of “No! We’ve outgrown zoos! Zoos are for babies!” But, to my relief, they both simultaneously pondered going to a zoo in this very hot, dry, bland-looking climate and said “Yes.”

We arrived at the Living Desert at about 11 a.m., with the temperature hovering in the high-80s. Usually at places like these, I’m a huge tightwad: I’ll buy the entrance tickets but nothing else. While I did bring a bag of snacks (laden with chametz to get rid of it before nightfall), I also purchased access to the Living Desert’s shuttle and even one ticket for each girl to ride on a camel. (I did get a AAA discount on our admission tickets, however; then again, we spent about $70 in the gift shop. So, I think the Living Desert won.)

Two hours later, (thank God I’d purchased shuttle tickets), we left the place, after having had a fantastic time on the Living Desert’s grounds. We saw cattle from Africa; impossibly lanky giraffes licking trees; a sleeping jaguar; millions of native cacti and more types of palm trees than I knew existed; the very languid camel that accepts squealing children — and their parents (but not this one) — on their “backs”; owls; a Mexican snake; and damaged animals undergoing rehabilitation in the on-site hospital that we found fascinating. (The rabbit under sedation looked a tad odd; I had to keep reassuring the girls it wasn’t dead, just under heavy doses of drugs to keep it from feeling pain during its procedure. The sedated rabbit gives new meaning to the word “floppy.”)

Also, the girls had finished off last night’s pizza and quesadilla; we would return to a chametz-free hotel room.

Upon arriving back at our hotel, the Palm Canyon “Resort” (quotation marks mine), the girls readied for the pool while I began organizing our Passover meal. It was at that moment I discovered the broken disposal and dishwasher. And the dwindling final role of TP. A call to Housekeeping was fruitless; I got a voice mail (on which I left a message) but after an hour passed (while I started to prepare roasted baby potatoes, baked salmon, baked chicken, a spinach salad, and our Seder table) without response, I turned myself into the squeaky wheel. With the girls safely in the pool, I marched on down to the “Guest Services” (quotations again mine) desk and asked, “Has Housekeeping received my message?” and “Will you please come to our room to fix our ailing appliances; we’re having company tonight. Oh — and more toilet paper, too, please.”

Before returning to our room, I checked on the girls in the pool and went to the pool-deck bar to ask if they had matches; while I’d brought candles south, I didn’t think to bring matches, and the Front Desk didn’t have any (“Honey, we’re a non-smoking facility.” Whatever.) The bar back reached up high, past bottles of cheap rum and tequila and brought down a Bic lighter. “Just return it when you’re done with it.”

Set to really begin my Passover meal preparations, I then gathered the girls and we returned to our room. The maintenance folks already had come, so everything was in working order; a half a dozen extra TP rolls showed up, too.

The family arrived promptly at 6, and our Seder in the Desert commenced and went rather smoothly, save for the few moments when Alyssa wanted to “help” Hayley with the Hebrew and Hayley rebuffed the “help.” My in-laws all donned kippot and tried everything on their plates. Tudi, though, at 92 years old, takes the (kosher-for-Passover) cake. She no longer can see very well and so wasn’t able to participate in reading from the Haggadah. However, wearing a bright-pink kippah (and looking a little Pope-like, as a result), she listened to every word and asked questions, tying the service into what she knows of both the Old and New Testaments and the intersections between Passover and Easter (such as the girls searching for the afikommen and kids doing an Easter egg hunt). Hayley read the Four Questions beautifully, and Alyssa chanted the order of the service and the plagues equally well. The girls bickered throughout our truncated Seder. But that seems fitting (kinda) given Exodus has a lot to do with underlings bickering with ultimately more authoritarian forces.

“Can we have dessert now?” “No! no! no! I will not let you go [to the fridge]!”

The Seder over, I felt I could at last turn my attention to really being on vacation. And take it all in.

This entire “Palm-fill-in-the-blank-name” area seems a throwback to the 1950s, with low-slung dwellings, all safely ensconced within gates. Community after community is separate, one from the other, by walls of one sort or another; the valley beneath the brown, rocky, jagged Sierra Madres is a patchwork quilt of vacation dwellings, each one fenced off from the other. (And all close to clinics whose services range from dialysis to memory care to cardiology. Lots of Urgent Care clinics and senior centers, too, in this locale catering to the aged.)

Ultimately, the street names in this enclave say it all, naming either Rat Pack folks or something to do with the sun and paradise: Frank Sinatra Way; Bob Hope Drive; Gene Autrey Trail; Dinah Shore Lane; Avenida del Sol; Vista del Sol; Avenida Amor; Portofino. All conjure a bygone era and something ephemeral and impermanent.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I requested Housekeeping come vacuum up our matza crumbs and bring more towels. It was then I learned that all the rooms receive only one cleaning a week. Would I like the cleaning today or tomorrow? Reflecting on the layer of matza schmutz all over our green-carpeted floors, I asked Housekeeping to come the same day. We then headed out to take the Palm Springs Aerial Tram up more than 8,500 feet in the air to the San Jacinto National Park (more on that in the next entry).

We returned from that fantastic and breath-taking adventure to a very clean, crumbless room. I was grateful. But a quick trip to the bathroom revealed Housekeeping also took a quick inventory of the paper goods they’d bestowed upon us the day before. They’d taken back all but two rolls of toilet paper.

Passover, this year, is turning out to be less about the bread of affliction than the roll of affliction.