Purim-or-does everyone eventually turn into their parents?

Mira was sick this week. The kind of sick that she will probably remember forever. Fever over 104 degrees and an eventual diagnosis of pneumonia. She subsisted on one watermelon flavored Popsicle and a bite of a hamantashen for the entire week. She was most upset though about missing Purim. She wanted so badly to dress up as Hermione! To join her friends in the costume parade and drown out Haman's name. Although I promised her that if she felt well enough we could go to the Purim carnival at the JCC, this wasn't enough for her. She wanted Purim on Purim. So, we brought Purim home.

Eli abandoned his queen Esther costume he had worn to school so he could be Harry to Mira's Hermione. They decided that I would be Professor McGonagall and Jeff would be Dumbledore. I phoned Jeff to tell him about the plan and to urge him to bring home plenty of wine for us. Good wine. Two huge down-on-the-floor all out stormy tantrums later (one by Mira because her robe didn't fit and one by me because of PMS) the three of us were ready. I was wearing an old long black velvet dress and my bath robe. I played some Purim music and we danced; Jeff came home and we ushered him upstairs to get changed. "What do I wear" he asked desperately, "Where's my costume?"
"Find something to wear" I called twirling around with Eli.

He came downstairs looking, well, a lot like Jeff. He was wearing black sweats, an orange sweat shirt and a flannel shirt. I think the flannel was meant to be like a wizards robe but it looked suspiciously like what Jeff usually wore for a Shabbat evening at home. We went to the Shabbat table and lit the candles with teeny tiny magic wands (lumos! we said before singing the blessing) we said the kiddush over goblets of pumpkin juice, and ate strange braided Jewish Muggle bread. When we sat down to eat Jeff turned to Mira and said "so you had quite a week didn't you Mira?" He said it in his regular voice while the rest of us had been using our very proper British voices throughout the night. Eli's was a higher-pitched version of his regular voice but he was trying mightily. Mira's voice was a spot-on imitation of Emma Watson's movie version of Hermione while mine was more Monty Python than Hogwarts.

Jeff continued to talk in his regular voice. He asked me to pass the challah (not the Jewish Muggle bread) and reminded Eli (not Harry) to use his fork. What was going on here? Jeff is no party pooper. He is a great dad and is usually tuned into the needs of our children surprisingly well. So, why was he missing Mira's need for Purim? It was because at that moment he wasn't Jeff. Before our very eyes he had turned into Marty, Jeff's father.

Like Jeff Marty is a great dad. His three sons have nothing but fondness for Marty. He was an equal partner to Ellen in raising them and is largely responsible for the "menchlike" qualities in Jeff, Mike and Ken. He was unequivocally and simultaneously both the fun parent and the disciplinarian in that Katz household. He also has nearly no capacity for make-believe. Most of us are somewhat addicted to our routines but to Marty they are an absolute necessity. He is crazy about our children but has a hard time connecting to them because he is so intensely uncomfortable in my house. He is often a few steps behind what the rest of the group is doing. Ellen attributes this to his hearing, but I'm not so sure that this is the case, it seems like more the essence of Marty.

Sitting next to me last night was not Jeff but Marty. I reminded my husband (in my starting-to-annoy-even-myself Monty Python voice) that we were playing a game and that the children and I would like for him to play with us. "I'm Marty aren't I?" he said a little bit astonished and horrified. "Yes, but try to play with us anyway". He did. The rest of the evening he put on his own Monty Python voice and entered Purim/Harry Potter world with the rest of us. He banged on his plate the loudest when I told the story of VoldermortHaman. He turned back into Jeff trying his best to turn into Dumbledore to bring Purim to our sick daughter. But Marty is lurking within him which lucky for us is not necessarily a bad thing. But a little scary.

So, then I can't help but ask was this night something that my mother would have put on for me if I was sick and missed Purim? Uhm... probably not. I think she would have wanted to but she wasn't really free enough. It was a huge privilege for me to be able to cancel every obligation I had this week to stay home and care for Mira. A bit of a burden too, and hard and certainly exhausting and annoying, but a privilege. A privilege to bring her Purim when she was sick. Certainly privileges that for both internal and external circumstances my mother never had. She just didn't. She always tried to be nicer to me when I was sick which probably goes pretty far in explaining why I was spent so much time willing myself to be sick while growing up. But she didn't let my sicknesses transform her life. She couldn't and I understand that now. But still she was nicer to me. This week I was nicer to Mira. There was a spark in all of this that was mom. She was there last night as surely as Marty was.