It’s a rainy morning, in a spate of rainy mornings. I think April 2021 is the second rainiest April in the history of New Orleans, so far – we’ve had major thunderstorms mixed in with steady, unending rain every day. Our back porch plants are loving it, it’s like a tropical forest back there, heavy nodding blooms and long trailing vines. My potted herbs of basil, sage, lemon thyme, tarragon and the like are exploding. I have to resist the urge to snip fistfuls of leaves and cram them in my mouth.
Our Easter season was a lovely one. Late last year I expressed to the Prof a desire to host a holiday – we have nice china and linens and I like using them to set a gussied up table, and I do love experimenting with fancy, expensive meat main dishes that I would not otherwise ever attempt. So, the Prof’s family made arrangements to come down for Easter, and it was perfect. Our besties who live across the street have a guest house in their backyard that they airbnb, and we rented it out for the Prof’s sister/husband/daughters. It ended up working well – the kids used it as a fun hideaway and spent a lot of time over there alone, and everyone had comfortable sleeping arrangements. Wyoming, my neighbor, texted me often that she could see the Littles running back and forth through her yard to the guest house and how cute it was to see them.
I attended Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, as I try to do every year. This year, they happened to be our two first in-person services post-covid-closure. I went to both in-person – they are thinly attended in the best of years, and practically nobody went to either, so it felt safe. (I’m also fully vaccinated, and while I still mask and distance and limit in-person indoors activity, the vaccination of course adds another level of protection.)
I went to Maundy Thursday by myself. A very small group of vaccinated choir members (who sit in a loft, apart from the congregation) sang Requiem, and I found myself so overcome I almost fainted. Instead I sobbed, so heavily I almost couldn’t breathe, and found myself wishing I had brought a backup mask so I could replace the one on my face (read more about Requiem here). I was struck by how church is one place where I can cry. At home, the children look to me (and their father) to be emotionally stable through all this. At work, I lead clients through impossible, exhausting choices every single day, carrying the burden that falls heavy on the head of the decision-makers through COVID-19. I am a church leader and make some choices there too . . . but sitting in the congregation that day, I was not in the role of decision-maker for once. I was just me. And the mantle slipped from my shoulders a second and I felt like a child, overcome by emotion, unable to breathe through hitching sobs. Blessed release.
At the Good Friday noon service, the Prof and his parents came along. I did a reading of Psalm 22 – my favorite Psalm, we all can feel the agony of this poet (perhaps King David, perhaps not). I am poured out like water, and all my bones are scattered: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my breast.
On Saturday the Prof and his dad smoked a couple of pork butt roasts, and we dyed eggs on the back porch – some using the traditional Paas kit, some with shaving cream. I have done the shaving cream eggs before and they worked great then, but they did not work this time. I think I remember that you needed to incorporate vinegar at some point, so the eggshells would be more porous and incorporate the dye. Maybe you boil them with some vinegar? In any case, they sat in that shaving cream a long time with no effect whatsoever. So when the kids were across the street I snuck them all out, rinsed off the totally white eggs, and then quickly dunked them in some hot water with food coloring and vinegar to pretend like it had worked. I am sure we are now eating copious amounts of shaving cream as we nibble our way through egg salad, I think whipped cream might be the better choice if we try it again.
Sunday morning saw the kids running for their traditional baskets, filled with mostly candy, plus a few small trinkets. (Even Jack and Ella, the two oldest, deep in the throes of tween angst, ran down for baskets). The Easter bunny always decorates the table, too, and sprinkles jelly beans amid the Easter grass. This year, he brought dinosaur eggs – plaster eggs designed for excavating dinosaurs. (The kids took on that fun project later in the day, while I was cooking, and I’m told it was an absolute mess but they had a good time.) The kids hunted for the real, decorated Easter eggs in the morning, and then we adults had homemade egg mcmuffins and mimosas while the kids gorged on chocolate.
To get out of the house, several of us went on a walk at Crescent Park in the Bywater. Craig and I practiced our cartwheels in the grass, and Jack played with his new iPhone, taking lots of selfies and videos. Then we gathered up some happy birthday balloons and a little gift and carried it all to Hansen’s sno-blizz, where our neighbor was working on her seventeenth birthday. We bought sno-balls and tipped handsomely and she gave us all masked, outdoor hugs.
That afternoon, we held an outdoor, plastic-egg hunt in Wyoming’s backyard, around the guest house. Their yard is large and there were lots of good places for hiding, and it was really fun for all. I did not take a single picture as I was mid-cooking. I didn’t want to miss it, so I brought my yeast roll dough and a cutting board over with me and kneaded and formed rolls out on the back porch while I watched the kids hunt. Those rolls plus the remaining items for our Sunday dinner (menu described here) were excellent. The Beef Wellington turned out well, and ham of course is hard to mess up. The biggest challenge was getting it all hot and on the table at the same time. When one has just a single oven, one must be creative! But we did it, and it was very special and just what I wanted. I even managed to slip into a five minute refreshing shower right before dinner, so I could wash off all the sweat and grease and kitchen filth, and feel ready to relax.
After dinner, I enjoyed a bourbon on the back porch and watched the Littles play with their new ribbon wands (from the Easter baskets), while the adults and older children cleaned up from dinner.
It was a special, fun weekend, and I am so glad everyone came. We had a few more adventures the next day, but I have grown weary of waiting for my blog to upload additional pictures, so we will end on this cheerful image – two sweet children, twirling colorful ribbons among the porch flowers as the sun sets on a happy, fulfilling holiday.