The Angel of Death, she is a cruel mistress.

When I stepped out onto the sidewalk after my commute this morning, it was snowing.

SNOWING.

It hasn't snowed in April since I was a kid — as far as I remember, anyway. Whenever I talk about how it hasn't snowed in April since I was a kid, I sound like a long-ago-yarn-tellin', walkin'-uphill-both-ways-barefoot-bitchin', you'll-eat-your-vegetables-if-you-know-what's-good-fer-ya-orderin' fool. But it WAS that way! It used to snow up to my waist! And it was great packing snow! None of this "light dusting" business! Two days later, it would still be there! Nothing melted! We could build five-bedroom, four-bathroom fortresses from that snow and live in them happily until June!

Oh, hell, it probably snowed in April last year. Who knows.

I seem to be regressing a lot lately, probably because it's Passover. Every year as seders loom ever-carbless on my calendar, I contemplate why I hate this holiday so much, which leads me to contemplate my upbringing, which leads me to the realization that at 32 I still behave like a petulant child.

Passover was always such a huge deal in my house. My parents are big holiday people — they entertain for more than 20 people just about every single holiday — but they observed Passover with a particular tenacity. I think that's only because keeping Passover entails so many physical requirements: You have to rid your home of all bread (super-observant Jews skim over their shelves with feathers to make sure every crumb has been eliminated; my parents just chose not to buy bread that week); give up eating the stuff for eight. whole. days.; change your dishes, silverware and cookware to meet kosher-for-Passover standards; and organize a seder highlighted by an hours-long retelling of the story of how the Jews escaped bondage in Egypt. (Heh. I said "bondage." Dirty.)

It was a huge deal, so I hated it. I hated unearthing dish sets that served 6,000 people and schlepping them upstairs from the basement. I hated sampling the newfangled faux-cake desserts and cereals (kosher for Passover Cheerios stick to your teeth in the most unholy way). I hated seders that never seemed to end, singing songs in Hebrew, cleaning up matzo crumbs from the nether regions of my bra. It didn't matter that my family is quite fun and that the group we always assembled for Passover was a bloody riot. It didn't matter that the holiday was one of the only times of year that we spent with a particular patch of cousins who my grandmother was just crazy about. It didn't matter that the only truly edible food available during the eight days of Passover was chocolate, so that's all I ate. It didn't matter that the story of Passover is incredibly moving, moving enough for a Charlton Heston/Edward G. Robinson/John Derek epic (which is the best part of Passover). It felt like Hebrew school, which every kid hates, and I hated hated hated it. Hate.

This year, the seders were short and it was mostly painless ... until I had to do the Four Questions. For those of you unfamiliar with the tradition, it is left to the youngest child attending the seder to ask four questions, starting with the crowd-pleaser, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" (Um, because there aren't any dinner rolls. Ba-dum-bum.) The last time I did it, I must have been 8 or 9. I had to do it Monday night. There I am, sitting at the table, boobs drooping, waiting for a phone call from my gynecologist and trying to schedule workmen to come to my apartment and give us estimates on a new garden fence, and I am the youngest child at the table. Total regression. Hate.

This kind of holiday and how I react to it also makes me think about why I hate cooking so much. I love the idea of cooking, I love farmer's markets, I love cookbooks and recipes, I love cooking utensils, I love feeding people. I hate to cook. I don't find it cathartic, I don't find it relaxing, I have no sense of measurement or instinct for seasoning. I can follow instructions, which is probably why I'm a better baker than I am a cook, but it completely stresses me out.

(Lisa and I had this conversation last week:

ME: I baked a chocolate cream pie last night.
HER: Yum!
ME: I think I did something wrong.
HER: Why?
ME: It looks like somebody pooped in a nine-inch pan.

And ... scene.)

I think it's another example of petulant, 32-year-old rebellion. My mother is a great cook. She can make anything and it's always delicious. I don't think she's ever made something I didn't like, and that includes the Eggplant Parmesan Incident Of 1983. And like any mom, she always tried to get me to cook with her, and like any kid, I hated being roped into doing anything I didn't think of first, especially if it was domestic. I've been running away from the kitchen ever since.

My complete disdain for The Passover and The Cooking, it makes no sense. These are two things that are good for me. One is a holiday that no kid can really appreciate but is value-added as you age and becomes more than the story itself, and the other is sustenance, nurturing, creativity and action. Instead, I look at Passover as a time to de-bloat while I give up bread for eight days, and I look at cooking as something my husband does while I watch Law & Order.

I usually like to think I'm evolved, but yeah, not so much. Ah well.