Maundy Thursday and Easter Musing

(Thursday)

So ... today is Maundy Thursday, the day traditionally observed as the night of the Last Supper, the night Jesus was betrayed and tried, leading up to Good Friday and then Resurrection Sunday ...

And I was just wondering what special observances, traditions, rituals, etc., people have for this weekend. Mom and I were talking about why we like Easter (or any holiday, really), aside from the reminder that Easter serves of the salvation available and the symbol of hope that it's supposed to be to believers ... we talked about the "warm fuzzies" memories that we had of Easter.

I don't remember when I learned that Santa and the Easter Bunny are, well ... not there. I'm sure I cried, but I don't remember. I do remember, though, that I after I knew, Mom would let me stay up with her the night before Easter Sunday, filling Easter baskets and decorating the living room to surprise my brother. I loved that. I liked being an easter bunny way back in elementary school. Around that time, too, we were going to New Life Wesleyan Church, which put on a huge Easter pageant every year in the CAM-PLEX Heritage Center, and Easter became this magical time of stages and lights and stage makeup and costumes and choirs and running around in the labrynthian underground (at least that's how it seemed to an imaginative 11-year-old) of the theater ... in addition, we had to get up before the buttcrack of dawn to be at the theater in time to eat breakfast and to get our costumes and makeup done in time for the 8 a.m. service, so we were usually there by about 6 in the morning on Easter Sunday, eating the scrambled eggs and pancakes and sausage and such that the men of the church had been cooking since about 5 in the morning. I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but there are times when early morning is magical, and those Easter Sunday mornings were some of those times.

Things changed as we grew up, and I know there were a couple of Easters when we felt pretty lucky just to be getting to church to see the service, much less participate in it. In college, there was at least one year when I had to celebrate away from home -- in Lynchburg -- and Holly and Janelle and I went to a huge, beautiful Presbyterian church for services and then had Easter dinner (lunch) at Applebee's. That was when going to Applebee's was still a huge deal to me ... an event, something to look forward to.

And now, in the ho-hum of work schedules and all, a new sort-of tradition of a free-for-all food feast with Amber and some family and lots of friends and some strangers has taken shape over the past couple of years. I'm not sure how we're going to swing it this year, but we're going to try ... between our two ovens/stoves, three apartments between Amber, her aunt Patty and me, and hopefully lots of hungry people, it will be a happy Easter this year, too. Not quite the overflow that we had at the Victorian House on the Prairie ... but it should be something to remember, something to write about someday when I'm reminiscing again about Easters past ...

(Friday)

Just for good measure, I dragged myself into public health this morning to make sure I'm not contributing to the spread of plague in my office ... and I'm not, so I'm at work now, doing my job and the job of the guy who's decided he's too sick (again) to come in to work.

While sitting there, waiting for the nice lady to shove the grape-flavored popscicle stick down my throat, there was a little girl waiting for the same, sitting with her dad, and she was reading a book out loud to him. It was such a sweet scene, a little girl reading to her daddy. It reminded me of when my parents would make me read out loud to them. I always felt a little silly, but I think it helped foster a love of reading and probably helped me to learn how to read "on time," according to the standards of my school ... If there are any moms or dads out there who read with their kids or "make" their kids read out loud to them -- kudos.

And ... I guess that's all for now. I get to work tomorrow, which will be nice for overtime on my paycheck but will not be so nice as far as having a weekend to, well, have a weekend. I still need to coordinate cooking strategies with Amber for Sunday ...