Ressurection

Easter

My childhood was in the late 40's and early 50's, so it was vastly different from today.
My parents were married shortly after World War II and I was born two and a half years later.
The times were simple and life was less complex.  Slower as I remember it.

And  my memories of Easters past are more vivid than my Christmas'.

 Easter  was a time when my sisters and I were each bought a new dress.  And a hat and gloves, and a purse and white patent leather shoes.  Actually, it was the only time I can remember that we got new clothes.  School and play clothes just appeared.  But Easter clothes were planned and anticipated.  An exciting time in little girls lives!

Palm Sunday we'd received palms, either made into crosses or just long strains of palms, given in remembrance of a triumphal entry, riding on a donkey.

A big Easter egg hunt for neighborhood children on the front lawn of an estate near our street.

 Easter was special.  We dressed up, more than the average Sunday!  My dad in his suit, which he wore every weekday I can remember, my mom in a dress and my sister and I  had our Easter bonnets on and proudly wore our new white gloves clinging to our purses.  Going  to church and after to our grandparents house for a big Easter dinner.


It was spring!  The hyacinths and daffodils were blooming, dogwoods were arrayed with blossoms, and the forsythias, were yellow mounds in hedges.

It was Easter!

This year, 2016, we had almost all our immediate family up for the weekend.

Big doings!  Family from Atlanta, Long Island, and Canton.  Good Friday and Easter church services, and a baby shower somehow fit in between..

And  I have the grown up Jesus now.

 A realization again that this, this birth, this life, this death and this resurrection, is my life.  His magnificent obsession in preparing a way for us, for me, back to the Father.   The grief, alienation and abandonment not only of his family and  his followers but of his Father;for me, for all.  His gentleness and kindness as Mary, a woman, is the first to see him resurrected.  His revealing himself to a few, his disciples, then more than 500.  His revealing himself to me.

Easter will continue to be my wonderful childhood recollections, of dresses and gloves, of  Easter baskets and candy, of family and spring.  Of pictures of Jesus coming to Jerusalem, of the cross, of  the three crosses, of the empty tomb.  Of newness and life.  Easter is not an intelligent understanding now, but a relationship with my Savior.   A deep commitment to a person who gave me life, gave me hope, gave me gifts, gave me family, gave me forever.