Easter Sunday

Poland remains predominantly Catholic. Someone explained to me that even though many these days view themselves as rather more modern in their approach to the practice and even interpretation of religion, they still like to adhere to traditions, particularly if those traditions have social elements that go along with them.

Easter is full of traditions and social elements and so, predictably, Ester is big in Poland. People make a holiday of it. The students (who are my tenants) left to be with their families on Thursday and wont be back until Tuesday and well they may stay away, because nothing much happens around this holiday weekend. Everything shuts down.

Of course, the States aren't so homogeneous, but still, you do get the sense that the country shuts down for Christmas. Not so on Easter.

Take today:

I was up at dawn to let the cheepers out (and it was such a lovely dawn!)...






... Trying to understand if anything had changed in the way the girls coexist these days...






(Ed has his ownview of the whole cheeper dynamic. He'll tell me -- they're hanging out together now just fine. And this is true, but if you look closely, you'll see flighty Henny still proceed with caution when the big girls are there and you'll see Scotch chase any one of the hens if they come near her bread. The details are always more complicated in life, aren't they...)


And after a very skewed breakfast (an orange? you want just an orange for breakfast?? Looks good to me)...





... I notice (as I always do when I come back from a trip) that Ed is hidden somewhere behind billows of white beard and so I trim that, and tidy the farmhouse, and then -- and this is the key point -- I go out to do the week's grocery shopping.

You would not find a grocery store open as usual in Poland on Easter. Perhaps in some cases not even on Saturday beforehand nor the Monday after.

Ed tags along and that is very wonderful, as it's been quite a while since he pushed the cart for me. And, too, back at the farmhouse, he doesn't quite return to his engrossing machining project, but instead he hangs back and we stories around as we pretend to go about our business.

(Occasionally, we are entertained by the cheepers who, realizing that we're in the farmhouse, come trudging to see if I'd be tempted to visit with them. I am tempted and I do go out. With bread. Which starts the whole dynamic of grabbing pushing nipping all over again. I swear, sometimes it's just better to leave them to their worms during the day.)






In the evening, the young family comes over for Easter dinner at the farmhouse.






Her favorites? Well, the asparagus of course (a future vegetarian??) and, too, the berries off of her little dessert tart.






To me, she has changed so much in the last ten days! But, she has retained that happy disposition of hers. Ed throws her over his shoulder-- she grins.






She runs with her BF penguin -- virtually chortling with joy.






Happiness -- so elusive sometimes,  so hard to clamp down and hold firm. Not today, though. Not today.