April showers, et cetera et cetera
The school I attended up through the sixth grade was technically Protestant – the hint being its name, Trinity – and students were required to attend Chapel each week, but, oddly enough, the student body was predominantly Jewish. So was the student body at Dalton, where I spent the remainder of my grade school years. And so was I, sort of – my dad is Jewish. Except my mom is a lapsed Protestant. And both of them are atheists. So I guess you could say that when it came to holidays, religion didn’t exactly play a big role – we essentially cherrypicked the ones that seemed to make sense to us to celebrate, and celebrated those in a way that made sense to us, too.
Easter was never really a big deal in our house; it always came upon me out of nowhere, like an afterthought to Valentine’s Day (the Easter Bunny usually delivered my basket of creme eggs in the morning, shortly after my parents had ushered me back into bed; it appears that I wasn’t the only one who Easter took by surprise). Once, when I was in fifth grade, a friend of mine took me to an Easter service with her family. I remember being excited to dress up in my favorite plaid skirt, and I remember the kids got to go up on stage to pet a rabbit, but that’s about it.
As an adult, I still tend to forget about Easter until it’s actually there, but my experience of it is generally lovely nonetheless. I enjoy that it’s a day that families tend to spend together. I enjoy hiding plastic eggs around the yard for our kids to find, and how everyone seems determined to pretend spring is finally there even if it’s not, and how it always feels like a good day to go for a walk.
So here, in celebration of Easter (and the season, more generally) are a few of my favorite Spring-y things.
