Today I’m serving Easter with a small side of Passover. It’s a deviation from my original intent, but hey….

Well, our Easter was great, except for the recurring blaze in the oven (we had to post a watch on it) and the bottle of dessert wine that took three grown men, four corkscrews (one didn’t survive)(the corkscrew, not the man) and a final resort to power tools to open. That cork was some beast.

The smoke dissipated when we opened every window in the house and fired up all the ceiling fans. The wine was kind of needed by then. No need to worry….all is well. Return to your homes. Nothing to see here.

What I really wanted to tell was an Easter/Passover tale from my childhood.

I must have been about six. Growing up and going to school in Center City Philadelphia was just the best thing ever….so much to see and do. Like shopping for those great big Easter eggs with mom after school.

Barricini’s Candies was on Walnut Street near Broad, a posh wonderland of the fanciest Easter eggs imaginable. While mom discussed buttercream vs coconut eggs, I browsed amid the display cases. And found Little Girl Heaven!

There was a set of silver color dishes in one case, with silver flatware and….wait for it….silver wine glasses! It even had candy food with it, all in a gift box. I mean, wow! Just like my idol Cinderella probably had in the castle with the prince!

I so wanted it!

It wasn’t like me to wheedle and it wasn’t like mom to just buy me anything I wanted, but I REEEEAAALY wanted those dishes! My brother and I could be Cinderella and the prince with that set! Pleeeease, mom?

She looked at the set, her eyebrows flew up, and she shushed me…..whispering, “No…..you can’t play with that.”

Oooooohhh……why? Please? Yes, we will. We will play with it all the time! Promise!

Long story short, she bought me the cool silver dishes with flatware, goblets, and candy food. And we played Cinderella and the prince for days on end, toasting with those silver goblets and serving the pretend food on those silver plates.

We didn’t eat the candy food, though. It looked kind of weird. But no matter.

Years later, I found out why mom really didn’t want to buy me this great plaything. It wasn’t, as I envisioned, a Cinderella/Castle/Prince toy. It was a Passover toy.

Well, that explained the weird looking candy food. But what six-year-old girl thinks about possible sacrilege, playing Cinderella with religious symbols?

Mom thought about it, of course, but I guess she figured we would be forgiven. And maybe she knew it was a good way to honor both holidays in a childlike way.