Are you an Easter person? Well then, may you have health and love and a moment at least of merriment on this day! (If you're not an Easter person, my wish for you is the same.)
Am I an Easter person? That's a tough one. My parents were not holiday people. Not secular, not religious, not pagan, not national, not personal, not any holiday hoopla. No traditions developed, none passed on. Oh, when we were very little, there was a Christmas tree. But that ended somewhere with elementary school. If you were old enough to walk to school by yourself, you were old enough to be done with holidays. So Easter, which is huge in Poland, even among those who have long passed on going to church every week, never made it to our home.
You could say that when I had my own family, we started with a clean slate: we set in place our own traditions. (Though in fairness, my ex-husband came from a family that was big on every holiday that crossed their path, even if it was a total Hallmark fabrication, so he did not come to the table empty handed.)
But Easter stumped me. Some of us went to church sometimes. Me, I stayed home and worried that somehow I was not giving the kids a meaningful, tradition-filled Easter holiday. And fifteen years ago, when I joined forces with Ed, I gave up any pretense of doing anything uniquely wonderful on this day. For one, it's not his holiday (he recalls vaguely family seders, at an aunt's house, but can tell me nothing more about them, except that he liked to mess with some ball bearings, though I can't quite figure out if these were toys or real rotational friction reducing devices). And, too, the usual (non-church) American Easter habits and tradition seem geared toward young people with a sweet tooth and a deep love of stuffed bunnies. That just doesn't mesh with where we are right now.
So here we are on Easter Sunday and even though I love spring, and holidays, and celebrations, at the farmette, we're keeping to the tradition of a low key approach.
Indeed, the day begins ridiculously early, with us driving to the grocery store some ten miles away, because remember? It's where we managed to snag a grocery curbside pick up slot last Monday -- a day when I was a tad worried about our rather low supply of milk.
It's foggy. It's cloudy. It's going to be cold. Yet there is something sweet about us being up, barely awake, trying to get to the store before it opens at 7. (On the mistaken theory that if you get there early, you beat crowds. Turns out there are no crowds, indeed, no one else is picking up anything and our groceries are not yet ready, so we spend a weird half hour in the car listening to grim news in the parking lot of a very very large grocery store.)
The order is only half filled (most items and even their substitutions are out of stock) so I am very glad we did not count on it for supplying the basics needed for a family dinner. It would have been a dinner of milk and mushrooms. No matter. We have nothing but gratitude for having even just those items nicely loaded into the trunk of the car.
I spend a good bit of the morning washing containers of foods in the kitchen sink.
Outside, the fog lifts, the air is still warmish. Ed goes back to sleeping. I pick daffodils for the kitchen table. Just a few. I leave the rest for our landscape. It really looks so much better with that yellow color boost!
And then I FaceTime with Primrose! Here's the little one, playing with a snake from grandma! (Don't ask.)
Such a lovely real Easter moment... She bounces between toys and games and her spirit is just so contagious! Here she is -- a little girl, with her mama, who happens to be my little girl.
And now comes breakfast with Ed. And I give him an animal report (including a lot of stern words about one cat who seems to like to patrol a bird's nest in the overhang of the sheep shed, and another cat that chased the two little kitties right off the porch), and he shakes his head in the way one does when there isn't a good solution to a sticky problem (six energetic cats who enjoy mostly chasing each other and any living thing that's smaller than they are; it's their idea of a good time).
In the afternoon, I fix supper for the young family. There is not a little guilt in this: so many people want so desperately to be with their kids and grandkids today and it cannot be done, whereas for us, living as we do under one common "isolation roof," it is doable and lovely, even though, especially because it is a holiday, I do miss the younger family terribly much.
More FaceTime, this time with all the cousins!
I want a picture of the awesome threesome! That's tough! Or is it? What do you consider a good photo? For me, it's one where they are all together. This one!
We eat a Sunday supper of crunchy chicken and asparagus (and corn, because, you know, the kids love corn), which does seem to me to be a very wonderful spring dinner, indeed an Easter dinner. And there are Ed's cookies and chocolates and fruits (which perhaps are the hardest to come by these days) and it's all very wonderful, even if not traditionally so.
A pause for post dinner quiet time.
In the evening, Ed and I sit back and exhale. Another day, made special by the season, by a holiday, and especially by the fact that our closest ones are doing well.
Dare I hope you had a very lovely day as well? Yes? Oh, but may it be so!
With love.
Am I an Easter person? That's a tough one. My parents were not holiday people. Not secular, not religious, not pagan, not national, not personal, not any holiday hoopla. No traditions developed, none passed on. Oh, when we were very little, there was a Christmas tree. But that ended somewhere with elementary school. If you were old enough to walk to school by yourself, you were old enough to be done with holidays. So Easter, which is huge in Poland, even among those who have long passed on going to church every week, never made it to our home.
You could say that when I had my own family, we started with a clean slate: we set in place our own traditions. (Though in fairness, my ex-husband came from a family that was big on every holiday that crossed their path, even if it was a total Hallmark fabrication, so he did not come to the table empty handed.)
But Easter stumped me. Some of us went to church sometimes. Me, I stayed home and worried that somehow I was not giving the kids a meaningful, tradition-filled Easter holiday. And fifteen years ago, when I joined forces with Ed, I gave up any pretense of doing anything uniquely wonderful on this day. For one, it's not his holiday (he recalls vaguely family seders, at an aunt's house, but can tell me nothing more about them, except that he liked to mess with some ball bearings, though I can't quite figure out if these were toys or real rotational friction reducing devices). And, too, the usual (non-church) American Easter habits and tradition seem geared toward young people with a sweet tooth and a deep love of stuffed bunnies. That just doesn't mesh with where we are right now.
So here we are on Easter Sunday and even though I love spring, and holidays, and celebrations, at the farmette, we're keeping to the tradition of a low key approach.
Indeed, the day begins ridiculously early, with us driving to the grocery store some ten miles away, because remember? It's where we managed to snag a grocery curbside pick up slot last Monday -- a day when I was a tad worried about our rather low supply of milk.
It's foggy. It's cloudy. It's going to be cold. Yet there is something sweet about us being up, barely awake, trying to get to the store before it opens at 7. (On the mistaken theory that if you get there early, you beat crowds. Turns out there are no crowds, indeed, no one else is picking up anything and our groceries are not yet ready, so we spend a weird half hour in the car listening to grim news in the parking lot of a very very large grocery store.)
The order is only half filled (most items and even their substitutions are out of stock) so I am very glad we did not count on it for supplying the basics needed for a family dinner. It would have been a dinner of milk and mushrooms. No matter. We have nothing but gratitude for having even just those items nicely loaded into the trunk of the car.
I spend a good bit of the morning washing containers of foods in the kitchen sink.
Outside, the fog lifts, the air is still warmish. Ed goes back to sleeping. I pick daffodils for the kitchen table. Just a few. I leave the rest for our landscape. It really looks so much better with that yellow color boost!
And then I FaceTime with Primrose! Here's the little one, playing with a snake from grandma! (Don't ask.)
Such a lovely real Easter moment... She bounces between toys and games and her spirit is just so contagious! Here she is -- a little girl, with her mama, who happens to be my little girl.
And now comes breakfast with Ed. And I give him an animal report (including a lot of stern words about one cat who seems to like to patrol a bird's nest in the overhang of the sheep shed, and another cat that chased the two little kitties right off the porch), and he shakes his head in the way one does when there isn't a good solution to a sticky problem (six energetic cats who enjoy mostly chasing each other and any living thing that's smaller than they are; it's their idea of a good time).
In the afternoon, I fix supper for the young family. There is not a little guilt in this: so many people want so desperately to be with their kids and grandkids today and it cannot be done, whereas for us, living as we do under one common "isolation roof," it is doable and lovely, even though, especially because it is a holiday, I do miss the younger family terribly much.
More FaceTime, this time with all the cousins!
I want a picture of the awesome threesome! That's tough! Or is it? What do you consider a good photo? For me, it's one where they are all together. This one!
We eat a Sunday supper of crunchy chicken and asparagus (and corn, because, you know, the kids love corn), which does seem to me to be a very wonderful spring dinner, indeed an Easter dinner. And there are Ed's cookies and chocolates and fruits (which perhaps are the hardest to come by these days) and it's all very wonderful, even if not traditionally so.
A pause for post dinner quiet time.
In the evening, Ed and I sit back and exhale. Another day, made special by the season, by a holiday, and especially by the fact that our closest ones are doing well.
Dare I hope you had a very lovely day as well? Yes? Oh, but may it be so!
With love.
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