paperweights and winged things

Easter Sunday brings back memories of hollow chocolate bunnies and church services where women and girls wore pastel colored dresses. It also brings back images of food. We would eat honey-baked hams and corn casseroles and potatoes with chedder cheese and chives. My mom had a bunny mold and would craft a bunny cake which she iced with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with cocunut. My grandmother, with her beautiful blue eyes and soft body, would bring over lemon meringue pies hidden in opaque plastic containers. We would all admire the egg white peaks when she decided to lift off the cover.
My sisters and I would sit in the grass of our front lawn, looking through our easter baskets and cracking open those brightly colored plastic eggs. Susanne, older and beautiful, would make us laugh. We found the greatest present in sitting next to her, in playing with her, in running around like the children that we were. I knew Easter was supposed to be about Jesus, but I felt like it was about my family--all of us sitting together and eating and laughing and enjoying the cool days that would soon evolve into humid stickiness.
Today I am sitting in my kitchen. My younger sister is in Texas, and I have made carrot cake, blueberry muffins and a brocolli and chedder quiche. Susanne loves croissants and I am about to put a dozen into the oven. Now we have Hallie and Ben, and in a few hours I get to sit with them as we go through their easter baskets, cracking open eggs and unwrapping chocolates. Ryan and I are not going to church; I don't get to see the women and the girls dressed in pastel colored dresses. Instead I get to sit next to Ryan in a couch in my parent's living room. We get to look out at the snow covered hills that cloak the horizon in the West. The warmth of a hot oven and the smell of buttery breads will expel the harshness that the snow could have brought. The sun will be bright. I know now that Easter is not about Jesus, at least not to me, but it is about my family and food and being with the people and ther person that I love.