Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday has always been a special time for our little table of four. We observe the Easter Bunny version, not being particular adherents to any of the standard religious superstitions. At least not collectively – any family member is free to believe as they will, subject to the hoots and hollers of non-believers.  We’re an opinionated clan, if nothing else. And since the Daughters were little girls, we’ve been building our own traditions.

Mary puts together Easter baskets using a combination of heirloom and Fred Meyer examples to hold all the treats and the small gifts that comprise the year’s haul.  I wake the girls with my standard gambit that starts with “Okay, here’s the deal…” and winds its way through a succession of ever more annoying suggestions as to the chores that should be completed before we head downstairs.

Mary and I record movies and stills as jelly bean- and coin-filled plastic eggs (said eggs with origins in  our own mothers’ Easter arsenals) are searched out from our fiendishly clever hiding places.  The dogs bark encouragement and parents watch closely to make sure we don’t have any unfortunate the-dog-ate-chocolate incidents.

Easter dinner is usually ham and cheesy potatoes, yams, green beans (French cut, of course, but don’t ask me why it matters), rolls, etc. We tend to watch a movie together while the food cooks; this year, it’s Eat, Pray, Love.  Yeah, a major chick flick that needed much more editing, but the chice of movie isn’t the point.

This is the first major holiday (“major” defined as one for which we’ve developed our own traditions of observance – Arbor Day doesn’t count) that we may be observing together for the last time as a family unit.  Either of Daughter Two’s last two college choice finalists is a plane ride away and both colleges tend to schedule their spring breaks well before this particular holiday rolls around.  Daughter One will be working in Orlando after graduation and is unlikely to choose this as the holiday for which she flies home.

And I’m realizing that the traditions to which we’ve clung so steadfastly have started falling away.

And that’s okay. Perhaps the dispersal of ‘family’ is a rite to celebrate in and of itself.

The traditions have always been just the trappings that formed around the core practice – being together at certain times of year intentionally to celebrate the fact of ‘us’ as an entity. It’s about family after all and not just this little family of four.  The stories we’ve told of how our parents used to play Santa or the way an older sibling would do this or that on Thanksgiving  will gradually give way to a new round of remembrances that the Daughters will recall at odd reflective moments for their friends, significant others, children, neighbors and PTA buddies.

Easter and Christmas and Thanksgiving pass on in the hearts and minds of those who choose to remember family, because regardless of marriage or not, kids or not, religion or not, it’s that sense of family that passes from one generation to the next. And I hope that continues.