We were eating eggs and bacon for dinner last Tuesday when Steve recalled the Easter our daughters were young and our grass was covered with frost. Aly and Chloe, maybe 5 and 3 years old, burst outside with unrestrained excitement in their bare feet and skivvies to collect the brightly colored Easter Eggs they had spotted through the bay window.
I remembered worshipping in the YMCA in India — the only year we were away from our girls at Easter. Steve and I left them uncharacteristically huge Easter baskets when they stayed with Grandma Betty and Grandpa Frank and celebrated Easter with the family minus their parental units.
Aly recollected the joy of receiving a giant, football-sized purple egg with a fuzzy, stuffed bunny rabbit inside. Another year, Aly, the fashion diva, remembered wearing a “white button-up shirt and skirt with matching hot pink flowers appliqués, which I accented by wearing all of the Pretty, Pretty Princess jewelry. I think you (as in the writer mom) made me take off some of the jewelry for church.”
Phoebe just listened but was preparing for Easter as the worship leader at her church in Anderson.
We all abruptly stopped when Chloe added her Easter memory: “That time when Michael gave me an Easter basket with a cute baby kitten in it.”
Aly quickly inquired, “What, I don’t remember that?”
Chloe, adoringly gazing toward her husband Michael, said: “It was this year, right Michael?”
Michael answered silently with a grin, as he rolled his eyes and shook his head.
Whether you celebrate Easter with a basket full of colored hard-boiled eggs, bright plastic eggs, jellybeans — or a kitten — may we remember that at the Passover Seder, a hard-boiled egg dipped in salt water symbolizes both new life and the Passover sacrifice.
And one of the awesome reasons to celebrate living in Johnson County is the multitude of great churches. Easter is a great Sunday to worship our risen Lord.
