This is the first year I can remember in my adult life that I didn’t go to See’s Candy and buy Bordeaux and Scotch Mallows and Pecan Buds  and chocolate marshmallow eggs and bunnies  and nestle them in baskets we have used since my children were little.  Mom would have reminded me weeks ago.  I have been so busy packing that I actually forgot that Easter was upon us.  And if we were “back home” at the Good Shepard of the Prairie Lutheran Parish, that would not have been possible.

Lutheran Church, Hickson, North Dakota

After the Service

And if Aunt Verna was around she would have insisted that we could NOT have her Scandanavian pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream until we had gone to Easter services.

Mom loved Easter more than any other holiday.  Even more than Christmas, which brought out her inner Santa and her inner Angel to the max.  But Easter became entwined with the Spring, and for a girl who grew up in frosty Minnesota it was the time of flowering and new beginnings, of daffodils and promise, of all the embodiment that her own personal  seratonin had already most likely delivered.  This is the first Easter without her and I’m feeling quite sentimental.

She would have been sure to have unearthed the ancient sugar panorama egg that I surreptitiously bit into some 70 years ago.

And the foam bunnies that Kevin and Noelle decorated when they were little.  She kept all that  and I have it now in the box marked – EASTER.  I’m packing and weeding out and trying to discard.  What to do?  I had set it aside and now I’m not sure.

Robert’s talking about doing a lovely roast chicken – his best and my favorite. But I’ve packed all the cloth napkins and the house is strewn with debris and packing material.

But it’s not about “stuff”.  It’s about a time of renewal. Of rebirth and promise and moving on and beyond.    And that is exactly what we are doing here and now.  I think I just got my Easter message.