Although my own kid is 22, I still force, wheedle, cajole him into an Easter hunt every year in which he follows a dozen badly rhymed clues (many of them with references to the dog, the cat and, if at all possible, Bruce Springsteen). The clues eventually lead him to a festive basket filled with wonderfully unhealthy candy and a few other age-appropriate items. But this year my intrepid son is up near Lee Vining “ice” climbing with friends, and won’t be back until quite late tonight.
“So, I guess that means you want to skip the Easter hunt this one year?” I inquired cautiously on Friday when we spoke on the phone as he was packing his equipment. There was a pause before he replied.
“Oh, I don’t think we need to be rash,” he said finally.
Evidently even the frivolous sides of parenting have no sell-by date. And I am immeasurably thankful for that particular fact on this blue-white and beautiful Easter afternoon.
UPDATE: And, voila! Here’s one of Mr. kid’s ice climbing photos.
Nice drawing of a bunny. Happy Easter to you and everyone else.
Something interesting happened on the way to church this morning. When I got onto the expressway, the car’s serpentine belt came off the pulleyss under the hood. A mechanic had just worked on our car and must not have tightened everything down. With no power steering, no alternator, no cooling, etc., I pulled the car off the exit and into the parking lot of a very nice hotel. We discovered that a church had moved its service to a banquet room in the hotel that day because the hotel could accomodate many more people for a busy Easter than the church’s regular sanctuary. So, since it was going to be over an hour before the tow truck would get there and we could be picked up and since we were going to miss our service, the family attended that Easter service at the hotel. In fact, we knew a couple of people who went to that church. The preacher was much better than Rev. Wright, and the message was on target for an Easter sermon. What made this unique is that the church has a black preacher and a black congregation and we were the only white people there. We were welcomed, naturally, and God doesn’t play favorites.
A very happy story, Woody.
I love Easter – did the family thing. Woody’s sound’s like a bit of bad luck turning into something quite nice. Here’s an interesting link with some substantive data from Political Animal that touches on the longer view topics of this blog:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_03/013387.php
I always attend Good Friday service at St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. It’s a beautiful church and the Passion from the Gospel According to John is read by a thrity member choir. Very moving.
Easter Sunday we attended mass at Our Lady of Pompeii in Greenwich Village. It’s run by the Scalabrini Brothers, an order dedicated to helping immigrants, refugees and displaced persons. Our priest is an Italian priest from Brescia in Lombardy, who has worked in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador. He noted at the beginning of the mass that today marked the anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador.
All in all a moving and affecting day.
My Easter joke:
Saw a billboard that said,
‘Need help, call Jesus.’
1-800-005-3787
…Out of curiosity I did.
‘A Mexican showed up with a tow truck.’
“Although my own kid is 22, I still force, wheedle, cajole him into an Easter hunt every year in which he follows a dozen badly rhymed clues (many of them with references to the dog, the cat and, if at all possible, Bruce Springsteen).”
I hope you didn’t do this during the kid’s middle and high school days, this would surely get him picked-on and beat-up in school.