Pastel Happiness

I love Easter. Always have and hopefully always will. I hope also to pass that love of this chocolate covered, floppy bunny eared, pastel extravaganza on to Tessa. I understand why Jason might have a bit of a problem with it. Up here in this land of frozen earth and ungodly wicked wind Easter and all of it's color is well, hogwash. It's a fake celebration of a time that has not reached us yet. It's giving thanks for warmth and light that may well be weeks away. It's realizing that other people's children, most in this country, are tossing festive eggs and staining their khaki pants or white tights green with grass. While here we still dress up in these ridiculously out of season floral and striped outfits under our winter coats and trudge out into the snow or, if we're lucky, thick molasses mud and gather together inside one another's houses warm only by way of wood or oil.

Still, I love Easter. I look forward to the days when I can tie colored string to Tessa's bedroom doorknob. She'll awake bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to storm the house in a treasure hunt for chocolates and goodies and the ultimate prize of The Basket. It will be filled with crayons and markers and toothbrushes and seeds for planting and fluffy bunnies and chicks! And you know what? If it's crap weather outside and a frigid 10 degrees like it was here on Easter morning. We'll do just what we did this year and we'll jump in the car and drive to Connecticut. Land of lillies and daffodils and twice baked potatoes made to look like eggs with sprouts of chives, sunshine carrots and Nana's marshmellow green mystery salad.

I love Easter so much that I woke up this past Sunday morning wishing it was Easter all over again! But alas, it was not and I've got a whole 12 months to go. Hopefully next year Jason can actually come with us. We'll convert him one of these years. Once Tessa's old enough to get as worked up about this holiday as her mom he'll have no choice but to give it a second chance. After all isn't that what it's all about? A rebirth? A resurrection of light and hope? Faith in the ability of the sun to heal us? After a long, dark, hard winter we all need a little more pink and green I think. It's the perfect medicine for our snow shovelling aching backs, our dried out pores, our cracked hands. Give us some pastel pill, I'll swallow it whole.