The Easter that Wasn't

I do miss the traditions of Easter, whether the religious, or the secular Easter bunny stuff.  But with how I feel about the Catholic church, it would seem wrong to return just for Easter week ceremonials.  And with no kids or grandkids around, I didn't even buy a chocolate bunny. though I did enjoy seeing pictures of the girls decorating easter eggs.

And it was fun seeing them ready to collect eggs...though I wonder how many they expected to collect!

Last year I think my mother came for dinner, but dinner out is always confusing for her now and she has no concept of holidays anyway, s there didn't seem any point.  So it was just a day like any other.

I slept until 9:30 (after 2 hours in the middle of the night awake) and Walt was already off at Mass. 

We had our upstairs/downstairs life throughout the day, but I did cook a kinda/sorta Easter meal of a slice of ham (I seriously considered a leg of lamb, but the smallest one I could find cost $30, so I didn't get it).  There wasn't even a special Easter dessert, since Walt isn't into desserts and we had our ice cream bars.

The TV was off a good deal of the day because I was busy finishing Sally Fields' autobiography (which I did, but my word was it depressing!), but I did turn the set on at 5, for my one Easter tradition--watching Easter Parade.

Turner Classic Movies is so funny.  They day is filled iwth Easter-themed movies, covering every possible angle of Jesus' life and death, and then between The Shoes of the Fisherman and King of Kings is Easter Parade, then back to more Jesus.

Somehow I don't think the Easter parade down 5th Avenue in New York compares with the way of the Cross in Jerusalem!

But I like the movie and enjoy seeing it each year.

But the holiday is over and it's onto a new week.  Today I will be writing the review for the very strange, but funny, Disaster! the 70s Disaster Movie...musical! and this week I will be seeing Pajama Game and then, on Sunday, watching Char turn 80.

Easter Baskets

Atria was all dressed up for Easter yesterday.  I loved this beautiful filled egg that sat on a table in the lobby.  

 

In the memory unit, the dining room is lined with plastic eggs and streamers.  I'm sure my mother hasn't noticed.  I told her that Easter was coming ("oh is it?" she replied, not interested).  I said that it would just be Walt and me for dinner and asked if she would like to join us.  She waited a moment and then said "Well...I have some people coming.  I can't remember their name, but I have to get ready.  Let me get back to you on that."  I took that as a "no" and won't ask her again.

But I went to CVS to get stuff to put together an Easter basket for her.  I got several kinds of candy, including little Lindt Easter bunnies.  They didn't have any straw baskets.  We used to have dozens of them, all remnants of floral arrangements that had been sent to us after David's and Paul's deaths, but I eventually donated them to the SPCA thrift shop and have none left now.  But I found a tiny plastic basket that looked like the perfect size.

I'll put a bow on it and bring it to her later this week, when I have a car.  

Our kids had Easter baskets for several years.  The first one I made was probably Ned's first Easter, when Jeri would have been old enough to notice.  This was particularly memorable for me because I found a gigantic bunny, almost as big as Jeri, on sale for a ridiculously low price and bought it, along with a slightly smaller bunny for Ned.

In time, Easter egg hunts replaced baskets and, especially after we moved to Davis, the kids would stand in their bedrooms, looking down on the back yard and map out where they could see eggs hidden.  My favorite place to hide an egg was on top of the jungle gym, clearly visible from an upstairs window.

Karen and I had Easter egg hunts too, but since we did not have a grassy yard, our egg hunts were held in the living room (never was sure how the bunny got into the room!).  It was Easter when I had one of the most shocking revelations of my life.  My parents were watching us search and pointing out places where we should look and it suddenly hit me that they were the ones who had hidden the eggs.

"Thank you," I whispered to my father, who said, "Now that you know about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, don't spoil things for your sister."  Santa Claus too?????  I still remember how shocked I was to see this fantasy crumble along with the Easter bunny.

There were always new dresses, shoes and hats for Karen and me at Easter time.

with our neighbor, Stephen Calegari.  We're probably 5.

I always loved the frilly dresses and my mother (who literally worshipped patent leather shoes when she was a girl whose parents couldn't afford to get her a pair) always made sure I had new patent leather shoes for Easter, though I hated them.

It wasn't a big deal to get new clothes for the boys at Easter, but I tried to get a new dress for Jeri each year.  She had her own style, even as a little kid.  I remember the time we looked through a whole rack of pastel frilly dresses, none of which Jeri liked.  I finally told her I was going to the other side of the department and she could pick out the dresses she liked. Her choice (she was 5, I believe) was black with tiny flowers on it.  Definitely not my idea of an Easter dress, but it was perfect for her and she looked so cute in it.  I was glad I had let her make her own decision.

Religion did play a role in our Easters, both when I was a child and when our own kids were young, but the holiday these days seems to be mostly very secular.  I suspect Walt is the only one who still goes to church.  I remember in grammar school when I and about 3 or 4 of my classmates (Stephen was one of them) went to a hill near our house (it's now a fancy apartment building) to spend the 3 hours on Good Friday.  We took our bibles and the idea was to meditate and pray for 3 hours.  We each perched on a different part of the hill, separated from each other.  But, being kids, we didn't last 3 hours.  We might not even have lasted one hour and I think we ended up back at my house for snacks.

However you're celebrating (or not) Easter, may Sunday be a good day for you.

In My Easter Pajamas

It was 3 p.m. before I realized I was still in my pajamas.  I waited until the movie Easter Parade was over and then the plan was to get my mother and bring her here for a roast leg of lamb dinner.

I should add here that this was the line-up of movies on Turner Classic Movies today:

--Barabbas
--Ben Hur
--Easter Parade (?!)
--The Robe
--King of Kings
--Ben Hur--Tale of the Christ
--Quo Vadis
--Spartacus

I love Judy Garland, but how did she get into this list???  Still, I had not actually sat and watched the film in a long time...it's one of those movies I know so well, I can put it on as background while I'm doing something else.  But today, I sat and actually watched it.  It was like seeing it again for the first time.  A nice way to spend a couple of hours on Easter.

 

I had been mentally going back and forth all afternoon about whether or not I would actually bring my mother over here for dinner.  In the early afternoon it rained, moderate strength.  I knew she would not want to come out in the rain, especially since holidays mean nothing to her any more and she had no reaction on Friday when I told her I would bring her here for dinner on Easter. 

The rain finally let up and there was just a drizzle, which looked beautiful adorning the tree outside my kitchen window, but it still was wet and I was getting more and more convinced that I shouldn't try to get my mother.  I knew she would not remember that I said I was going to bring her here, and was not aware that it was a family holiday day, so I finally decided not to get her.

Then I got dressed.

"You're not wearing your pajamas," Walt said, in surprise, around 5:30. 
"I decided to dress for dinner," I told him.

Mother or no mother, I went ahead with plans for dinner--a roast leg of lamb, Cousin Nora's recipe for peas (from Ireland), and mashed potatoes, with salad.  All was delicious.  I wish lamb weren't so darn expensive.  It is my favorite of the red meats.

It was just Walt and me for the holiday, and we spent it watching the Beverly Hills Dog Show on TV, which was won by Ripcord, a gorgeous Doberman.

I've never been a doberman fan, but this guy was so strong and regal looking, it's easy to see why he won.

Well, actually no.  It's not easy to see.  Every time I watch a Best in Show competition, marvel at the judges who aren't judging one dog against another, but judging the look of one dog against the standard of the breed.  There were some beautiful dogs, one in each category, competing for the top slot.  My money was on the English Springer Spaniel, but I was happy for Ripcord and his owners.

So our Easter came without any bunnies, but with lots of dogs and a bit of lamb, and that was OK.  

Today I'll stop and visit my mother.

It's the Easter Bagle, Charlie Brown

Oh...BAGEL, not Beagle.


Today it was the Easter Bagel, as Ned decided he and Marta would bring bagels, coffee, orange juice and fresh strawberries to Atria. They had an Easter egg hunt to go to at 11, so would have to come to Atria at 9:30.  I was fairly certain my mother would be asleep then, but he called her at 9 to make sure she would be up and dressed in half an hour.

(We didn't get there at 9:30 when they arrived because the good one of us was off being a good Catholic and going to church while the other one of us sat home being sinful and guilty. It's too bad we will spend eternity in different places...)

When we arrived at Atria she was up, dressed, and enjoying a visit with Ned and Marta.

Things like this confuse her and she asked many times why we were there, apologized for not having anything to serve us, asked where the Easter lily that Ned and Marta brought had come from, and interrupted people to ask the same questions again, but it really didn't matter.  The whole point was that we were all together and having a good time.  I "blame" this all on Ned.  Easter is such a non-holiday for me, now that we don't have kids or lots of family around, that I was just going to forget it and cook the (expensive) leg of lamb I bought for dinner for Walt and me. I knew it wouldn't matter to my mother and knew that she would not want to come to our house for dinner.

But Ned, bless him, had other ideas and in the end, he was right.  Whether she knew it was a holiday or not, whether she remembers that we were there or not, it was a fun couple of hours and there are precious few holidays left to celebrate with her these days.

Ned got a bagel all fixed up for Grandma

Grandma said she didn't know what a bagel was and wasn't sure she wanted one.
(but she did finish the half Ned gave her)

Jeri called later in the afternoon to wish us a Happy Easter.  She said she had just spoken with her grandmother who, when asked what she was doing for Easter said "Nothing.  Just sitting here."  Sigh.  My mother is an exercise in learning to take life's moments as they come, to live in the moment, and not expect the moment to carry over into the rest of our lives.

When Does It Become Gluttony?

I said I was going to do it and I did.  This is what I fixed for dinner tonight, Easter night.

It's a ham sandwich and stuffed eggs.  I realized that when you don't go to church, you aren't having lots of family over for a big dinner, and when you have no little kids to plan an Easter egg hunt, there really is no point in fixing a fancy dinner just because it's Easter.  I could get the same effect with a lot less work.

Actually, the real reason why I didn't fix a big dinner was this:

This is the brunch I had today.  We decided that since I couldn't get a reservation for brunch at Atria, we would take my mother out for brunch.  Ned said he'd come with us (Marta was at a class). We picked her up at Atria and I brought her a pretty Easter basket of flowers.  She said she didn't even know it was Easter (though we had talked about it yesterday, and 30 minutes before I showed up, when I called her)

Perpetually confused whenever we leave Atria, my mother couldn't remember for more than 2 minutes where we were going and what we were going to do, but once we got to the restaurant, she figured it out.

The Black Bear Diner, which has been in Davis for many years, but which we had never tried before, was actually our third choice. We were supposed to meet Ned at our first choice, but he called from there telling me it was packed and there was a line out the door.  He had also checked another restaurant nearby and it was the same situation.  So I told him we'd meet him at the Black Bear, which turned out to be a good choice.  It was packed, but the crowd thinned quickly and we didn't have all that long to wait.

The menu is a faux newspaper and it is filled with food choices.  I could see instantly that there was no way my mother could choose from among her options.  She can't figure out whether she wants soup or not at Atria, when she has it every day.  I gave her a choice of 3 of the smallest orders I could find and that worked better (like giving a kid the choice of which clothes they want to wear rather than having them choose from the vast selection in their closet).

She has become like Walt's mother in her last years before she became essentially housebound.  What was on the order she had was 2 scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast and Ned also ordered fruit for her because she usually has fruit for lunch every day.

When it came she was angry that they would serve her so much food when there was no way she could eat that much.  Walt's mother did that for years.  As I get older and less able to eat a full plate of food any more, I understand the frustration, though restaurants certainly aren't going to start serving smaller portions to people they think may have small appetites.

The portions here were particularly large.  Ned and I both ordered eggs Benedict and my mother was appalled to think we could even consider eating that much (in truth, most of my hash browns were not eaten, and Walt ate most of my fruit).  I did manage to get down both eggs, but I left the place overly stuffed and didn't want to move all afternoon, much less think about fixing dinner.

Walt had ordered corned beef hash...

...which came with the largest biscuit I'd seen...and then he finished my fruit on top of it, so he certainly wasn't ready for a full sized dinner either, so both of us were happy with a sandwich and stuffed eggs.  We have the night to sleep it off before we are thinking of food again.

A P.S. and Easter

I was standing in the shower thinking about yesterday's entry this morning and realized I wanted to add something to it.

Ned has said in the past that I spend a lot of time talking about getting old.  And I do.  Because I am.  And so is he (and maybe he doesn't think it's quite so odd to dwell on it now that he's older!).  But the reason I do is that I am finding the aging process fascinating.  I have read in many places that most of us, when asked how we feel, choose somewhere in our middle 30s as how we feel, mentally.  We don't feel our brain getting older and when it does, like with my mother, we aren't aware of it.

But you can't ignore those aging symptoms in the body and how it betrays the mental age where we feel we sit.  And, as I am fascinated by what goes on in the brain that brings on dementia and imagining what sorts of changes have happened to my mother that she is not aware of, or what is going on inside the head of someone incapacitated by a stroke--and are they aware of what is going on -- I am also fascinated by when these little changes in our bodies take place.  When did it become so impossible to reach something on an upper shelf that I now use a pair of tongs to help me?   When did climbing stairs become so painful (one of these days I'm going to pull the bannister off the wall trying to drag myself upstairs here in our house!).  I just find the whole process fascinating on a mental level and frustrating as hell on a physical one.  So I did the "baseline" entry so I could see, in a year, if I have deteriorated any more or if I'm holding steady at that point.

But let's talk about Easter.  Easter has been one of those holiday/holydays that has assumed less and less importance in our family over the years.   It was, I think, an Easter Sunday when we had to practically stand in the parking lot (where we could neither see nor hear) because there was no room inside the church that I decided to stop attending Mass. After that, for me, it became the secular holiday of Spring and bunnies and eggs, though Walt, the good Catholic, continues  to go to Mass and of course goes to Mass on Easter.   (It's a shame we will spend our eternities in different areas of the afterlife.   He'll have the air conditioning),

For me, it was about the dinner.  First I cooked a family dinner for many years, then Walt's sister-in-law took over hosting the Easter dinners and we joined with Norm and Olivia at their house, with a lot of her family. She set a beautiful table and it was always a gala affair, often with music from her talented family, which I loved. Then when my mother started feeling uncomfortable around large groups of strangers, we split up.  Walt would go to his brother's house and my mother and I would go out to dinner.  The kids joined whichever group they felt closer to at any year, if they were able to join us at all.

When my mother stopped liking to go out for dinner, I would bring dinner to her house and cook there.  Ned and Marta sometimes joined us, but it was too far for Jeri or Tom.  Now Walt's sister-in-law is taking an Easter cooking holiday, so for holidays, we go to the brunch at Atria, which was my plan for today, but when I went to make a reservation for brunch, I found they were full and I could not, so another plan had to be worked out quickly.

I decided that I would bring her here and would rent Philomena, which we still have not seen, and then I would cook an Easter dinner.  That way we could have lamb and not pay an exorbitant price for it (amazingly, I was able to get a small roast which is, while expensive, affordable).  And of course I bought ice cream cones for dessert, since she has to have her ice cream after each meal.

I had a good time shopping for dinner and even found a dozen roses for under $10.  Unheard of!  I decided to use my godmother's blue glass plates, which I love and which I claimed when we moved my mother up to Atria.  This was going to be the first "company dinner" that I have hosted in many years, even though there would only be the three of us.  "All that crap" still surrounded the dining area, but the table looked lovely.

In the early afternoon, Walt went out and got flowers to take to the cemetery (for Paul's 15th anniversary) and then we picked up my mother, who was astonished to learn we were going to have Easter dinner.  If only I'd told her she would have dressed up.  Guess the note on her calendar and the two phone calls weren't enough! When I picked her up, she said she was feeling disoriented today, as if she sometimes wasn't sure where she was.

We went to the cemetery, which, for a cemetery, looked beautiful today.  I was going to take a picture, and forgot. I got the flowers arranged in the vase at the grave site and we drove home by the "scenic route" (where I knew we would see lots of flowers, which she loved).

When we got here, we settled in to watch the movie, and the new smart TV froze.  I about cried, but I kept punching buttons, while my mother helpfully kept repeating that she was glad her TV wasn't so complicated.  I finally unfroze it, but while I know what I did, I don't know what froze it in the first place.

Halfway through the movie, Peach called to wish us a happy Easter and my mother was very happy to talk with her.  I meant to suggest she call, and am glad she thought of it by herself.  I had earlier showed my mother a picture of Bob that Peach posted on Facebook, which shows him looking like the Bob we all remember and I thought that would make her happy.  She said he looked familiar, but she couldn't place who he was.

I made a stupid mistake ordering Philomena.  Given the option of $5 for the movie in HD and $4 for it NOT in HD, I went with the cheaper option which gave us, not surprisingly, a vastly inferior picture.  I really don't know if my mother "got" it or not because later at dinner when I mentioned the movie, she said "oh?  Did you watch a movie?" I said that it was the movie, with Judi Dench (her favorite actress) that we had just seen, first she had this look like she didn't have a clue who Judi Dench was and then said that she was glad I had the chance to watch it.  But owell.  It passed the time.

When the movie was over, I went in and made some hors d'oeuvres, Walt fixed a vodka and tonic for us (which she used to have every night before moving to Atria, and just after moving to Atria).  I used the godmother's beautiful blue glass glasses, which I've always loved.  When I handed my mother her drink, she said, in a puzzled tone, "those glasses look familiar."  She took a sip of her drink and had one of the hors d'oeuvres (leaving 11 for Walt and me) and there didn't seem to be anything to talk about, because I had to be in the kitchen and Walt is not a conversationalist.

I remembered that I had a box of things from her school years that she said awhile ago she wished I'd bring to her apartment so she could go through it, so I brought the box in.  She found an autograph book from 8th grade and read through every page of it, though showed no interest in the rest of the box (which contained her high school Varsity letters, among other things).

Dinner was served and I very smartly let everyone dish up their own plates. As I knew she would, she had one small slice of lamb, a small spoonful of potatoes, a small spoon of green beans, and a little bit of salad.  But she ate it all, which was nice, and she didn't complain about the amount of food.  

I had bought ice cream cones for dessert, which we laughed about, since that is her standard dessert order at Atria.

Once dessert was finished, I could see she really wanted to get home, so I took her home, and she apologized profusely that I had to drive "all that way" to take her home (all 0.8 mile of it!).

I had the feeling that she really would have preferred to have eaten at Atria and that this was not the treat I had hoped it would be for her, but that does take the pressure off me in the future. I won't go out of my way to try to find things outside of Atria to do with her, since she seems more comfortable just staying in her own little world.

She did say she wants a big party when she reaches hunnert, though.

Chapeaux de Paques

I missed the last Easter at my brother-in-law's house because of my mother's reluctance to party with a big crowd of strangers.  So Walt and I went our separate ways, he to Norm & Olivia's, me to my mother's.  We were going to do that this year, too, until my mother and I spent two days together earlier in the week and decided that we didn't need to do a third day just because it was Easter.   (As it turns out, she went out to dinner with two friends, including one who is a new widow, so it was much better all around.)

In 2010, the theme for the dinner was "bunnies" and we all wore bunny ears, which Olivia supplied.  I missed last year's Americas Cup theme.  This year's theme, I was told when I announced I would be coming after all, was "France."  Norm and Olivia are all in French mode right now because they are vacationing in France next month and this gets them into the mood!

We were supposed to "wear something French," and almost everyone came wearing a beret, except Walt who was probably more "French" than most since he was wearing the Tour de France cap I bought for him in Monaco.

(more guests came later, almost all in berets)

I didn't wear a beret because my head is too big to wear almost any off-the-rack hat, so my contribution to the theme was to bring my own napkin, which Jeri bought for me in Nice, so I could wipe the sweat off of my face!

(I don't think anybody noticed!)

Dinner (honey baked ham, under the sea salad and all the trimmings) was delicious and, with Olivia's professional musician cousin, there was lots of music. 

  

I had a nice chat with Olivia's (cousin?) and his wife, who have traveled in a lot of the places where we have, but with a different company.  We all reminisced happily about the beautiful Kizhi Island in Russia.  I also learned more than I wanted to know about the after-school care at one of the local school districts and the horrors that the "teachers" have to go through for the pittance they are paid.  Shocking.  

Walt, Norm and Alice Nan spent a lot of time next door at Norm's neighbors, who are out of town, and had given Norm permission to use their kitchen for the stuff that wouldn't fit in their own ovens.

Tom called at one point and we had a face to face chat with Brianna. We also had a chat (without face to face) with Jeri, who called at the end of her day.

Walt used his new toy (the cell phone he is mastering) to share photos with his brother.

When dinner was finished, there was singing in the dining room...

...and napping in the family room.

After dessert, all gathered in the family room for a bit of x-finity karaoke.

Because it had been an early dinner, we were home before 10.   The dogs were happy to see us, because they were 3 hours late for their dinner.

Thanks, Olivia and Norm for another wonderful Easter celebration!

Hopping Down the Bunny Trail

Easter today made me long for the old days, when the kids were little and when we were all together, us, the kids, Walt's family and my mother for all of the holidays. This being scattered all around the country is for the birds.

At least we were only in three parts of the country this year, not four. In the past few years, Walt has gone to Santa Barbara to be with his mother and sister, I have gone to my mother's to be with her (and sometimes Ned), and Norm and his wife have had the big Easter for her family and which of our family can come. In the years when Brianna would spend Easter with us (last year was one), I can't remember exactly what we did...I know Ned and I were at Norm's, and I'm pretty sure my mother wasn't. Maybe she was at her stepson's.

I know that this is the norm for most couples with adult, married children, but we have just been very fortunate that we have been able to be together for all holidays for as many years as we have, and I'm still adjusting to having no structure for our holidays any more.

So this year, Ned came to our house and drove with us to my mother's, where he and Walt had a short visit before going to Walt's brother's house. His sister and her husband had driven up from Santa Barbara the day before. There was apparently dinner for 30 at that house, while my mother and I had dinner for 2 because she feels lost in big crowds and didn't want to go to the other dinner. Tom, Laurel and Bri were with her family. Jeri, of course was in Boston, but called to wish us a happy Easter.

Back "in the day," Walt and I would hide eggs for the kids in the back yard. After the first couple of years, they got smart and scouted out eggs from the upstairs window before going downstairs for the actual hunt. They always knew there was one on top of the monkey bars.

I always made some sort of special bread for Easter, sometimes a challah, or hot cross buns, or something yeasty that I never made at other times of the year, and we would have a special breakfast after we all went to Mass together.

And then in the afternoon either I'd fix dinner to have here, or we'd all go to either Walt's mother's house or my mother's house for an Easter dinner.

When the kids were really little, before we moved to Davis, I made up Easter baskets for each one of them, with candy and a stuffed Easter bunny in them. I remember one banner year, when Jeri was 2 and Ned was still a baby, when I found two very large bunnies on sale for really cheap.

Of course there was also the very bad, awful, horrible Easter when everyone was so excited to go to an Easter egg hunt, but the real estate agent told us at the last minute that while we were out there would be an open house and we had to clean up for company before we left. The kids found no eggs and Jeri grumbled, as we left the park, "we would havefound something if you hadn't spent so much time cleaning house." I still cringe about that one.

I still miss those days when we were all together and everybody was excited to be celebrating Easter, the religious and the secular. I hope Brianna and the new baby have lots and lots of those kinds family celebrations as they grow up.

Easter 1975

Here's Yer Ears

In years past, when we gathered at Walt's brother and sister-in-law's house for Easter dinner, we often held hands and said grace before the food was passed. As I looked down the table at the group of adults (and one toddler) gathered there today, somehow I was happy that we had bypassed that tradition this year. It just would have been.... weird!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Tom had let me know the night before, after they arrived at my mother's house, that there would be an Easter egg hunt in the morning and I said I'd be there. "Cool," he said. I set my alarm for 5 a.m. and was out of here shortly after 6. By the time I arrived, everybody was already up and the Easter Bunny had brought a basket...

...but the big hunt had not yet taken place. First Tom and Laurel went out for a run, while Bri watched the Princess and the Frog with Grandpa.

She was totally mesmerized for about 30-40 minutes while Mommy and Daddy were out. She is definitely a video kid!

We took her outside for the big Easter Egg hunt

And then, after breakfast and getting dressed in her Easter finery, we went to Uncle Norm's and Auntie O's for the big Easter dinner...and all those funny bunny ears. Somehow we didn't really need bunny ears to be silly.

Predictably, Bri loved Uncle Ned and they had a great time together. He taught her all about false teeth.

She wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

Silly Uncle Ned

She really wasn't sure what to make of Ned at all.

But she decided he was pretty funny when they played with mechanical chickens.

And he kept her entertained while she had her diaper changed.

And when she wanted more serious adult interaction, there were all those other grown ups to talk to.

All in all, and bunny ears aside, it was really a fun Easter and we had such a good time with Bri.

A Good Friday

It was mid-afternoon, long after I'd finished my leftover Sesame Chicken from yesterday's lunch, before it dawned on me that this is Easter weekend and that today was Good Friday and I was now going to go to hell because I'd eaten meat on Good Friday.

It's been a long time since I've seen the inside of a church on Easter weekend, or followed the Catholic dietary rules for meatless Fridays or fasting during Lent, but I do occasionally think about it. Those old "you're going to hell if you don't" threats do linger, even this many years later.

(And now that "you're going to hell if you DO" doesn't seem to bother a lot in the clergy about more heinous things than eating meat on Good Friday somehow it doesn't seem important at all any more.)

When you grow up going to a Catholic grammar school, the whole Lenten cycle takes on huge importance and Easter is a very big religious deal. For a little kid, "Lent" just meant "giving up" something -- usually candy. My father always gave up liquor to prove he wasn't an alcoholic, and then had a gin fizz before breakfast on Easter morning.

One year I decided to go to Mass every morning before school during Lent...and then got punished by the nuns because I had to leave Mass before it was over in order to get to school on time. Apparently it didn't count until you stayed until the last minute.

We had various ceremonials in the church which shared the grounds with our school. There was always the Stations of the Cross on Friday afternoon, where we all stood, knelt, genuflected and responded to prayers as the priest went around to the various pictures on the wall depicting Jesus journey from his arrest to his crucifixion.

As I got older and joined the choir, we spent Lent preparing for a magnificent Mass to be sung to the accompaniment of the church's magnificent pipe organ.

My grammar school friends and I tried to do something to mark the passage of the 3 hours Jesus hung on the cross. There was a big "mountain" (read "hill" -- it's a high rise apartment now!) near my house and we all went there with prayer books. We each staked out a spot where we could meditate. But we were kids. I don't know if we lasted an hour before giggling started. But we tried!

Easter morning there would be an egg hunt before Mass. Since we had no back yard, the Easter bunny hid the eggs all over the living room. I never did figure out how he got in. I mean, Santa floated down the light well from the roof to the house, but where did the Easter Bunny come in?

Easter dinner was usually at my grandmother's, where she would prepare a lamb (with mint jelly) or ham (with a pineapple-maraschino cherry sauce), often with a salad I hated (don't say "celery root" to me!), and where I learned to love Cheetos, which were always served with drinks. (It's funny how the foods of holidays made more of an impression on me than the religion of the holidays!)

We never gave our own kids the foundation of a religious Lenten-Easter season. For one thing they went to public school, so they didn't get the indoctrination of the church. And I was very big on Easter bunnies and egg hunts and Mass was something to get out of the way before we could go home and have a special Easter breakfast, usually with some special bready thing I would make (hot cross buns for several years).

We had Easter egg hunts out in the back yard, but the kids learned pretty quickly to scope out where they were all hidden from their upstairs bedroom windows before going down to get their baskets and go outside to hunt.

We always had a good time making colored eggs. I learned to make sugar eggs one year, with little scenes inside them, and wanted to make them for each of the kids, but the kids wanted to make their own. I don't know how many years ago that was, but it may have been 30 years ago. I believe I still have those eggs, packed away in a Tupperware container that I haven't opened in a very long time. I wonder if they are still in one piece.

I wonder what kind of memories Bri is going to have about her Easters growing up. She is going to be with us this year, at Uncle Norm's house for Easter dinner, staying at Grandma Rynders' house the night before. Tom texted me that there will be an Easter Egg Hunt in the morning, so my plan is to leave here at the crack of dawn to get down there to watch her hunting for eggs. Walt is riding home with Tom and Laurel so he'll be there too.

But I ate meat on Good Friday and I won't be at Mass on Easter Sunday and I'll try not to let my granddaughter know that I'm probably going to go to hell eventually.