Easter Memories

Today, even though I had a great brunch with family, I was feeling so ill at ease. It night seem strange, because you are supposed enjoy the time with your loved ones. As I got my first cup of coffee, I realized that my husband was at work today and my mother was gone. It felt so irregular without my Mother-in-Law Linda, and the rest of the family as well. Just so many differences. My mother loved Easter, and still bought candy for us, even as we became adults. Of course that candy, eventually, came with flowers as we grew up. My Mother-in-Law would have dinner with us and my Father-in-Law, Sister-in-Law, and Brother-in-Law, and Mom would have Dad, Lenore, Tim, Don and I for brunch at the restaurant of our choosing earlier that day. I can even recall when I was a kid going to Easter breakfast at my grandmother's house. That was always an elaborate banquet of food.

The wind up for Easter, in my family, was never the same pomp and circumstance as Christmastime, although you had the annual Allaire State Park Easter Egg Hunt, which was always fun. You had your visit to the Easter Bunny, which resulted in a coloring book, maybe some candy, and a healthy fear of people in rabbit costumes. Most of them just smelled like dust and pee. Santa, was much the same in the smell department, with a less menacing face. Santa got NORAD and transportation to deliver frivolous amounts of toys, and the Easter Bunny encourages the consumption of tooth rotting, weight gaining candy by giving baskets of it away.

Easter was easy, because I didn't have to make a list. Christmas is when you poured through the Toys "R" Us circulars and chart which toys you absolutely wanted under that tree. Most of the time parents just picked the ones they could afford or chose evenly for the both of us and then call it quits when it came to that holiday. Whereas on Easter, they pretty much bought two gorgeous baskets and a basket in the middle to share. I used to call that the community basket. A great deal of the candy was Russell Stover, which was Mom's favorite. I'm convinced it was her segue into sampling some of the marshmallow bunnies.

Everything, when it came to these points in the year, was surrounded with love and, even though I'm not religious, I still feel that void. Holidays were a special time for my Mother and she took great pains to make everyone feel special. She had this unwavering faith that everything she did had a purpose and that a higher power always had a plan for everyone. I don't think that's true, because she definitely had her own order. The holidays were always the way she planned them, even when I was hosting them, and it seems so alien to have it any other way now.

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Waste of Money

I have to ask this question:  Why the hell would anyone spent their hard earned money on a ticket to see Charlie Sheen's one man show?  I was watching some news clips and there was one man who spent $300 on a ticket to see that moron.  That is ridiculous!  What happened to sensibility?  Did it fall out the fucking window and hit the ground twelve stories below?  He was booed and half of his audience left on his first trip to the Radio City Music Hall.  I do have a humorous little tidbit from his most recent "winning" second performance in NYC:  James Lipton asks, "What is your favorite curse word?" Charlie Sheen responded, "Either 'fuck' or 'Denise.'"  I never knew that my name was bangin' enough for a curse word but, hey, you never know.  More or less that corresponds with his intense hatred of Denise Richards, which is more of a violent thing.    

Traveling Through Life

Sometimes you go through the inner discussion in your life where you say, "Who am I?  Where did I come from?  Where am I going?"  You get to that point where you ask questions, such as those, about the value of your life and it's goals.  During our lives, most of us want to conceptualize the way our lives will work out.  We want to know the places that we'll go and we try to make these foolproof master-plans.  This comes from the basic need to be healthy, happy, successful, and prosperous.  It's a natural human instinct that we all aspire to no matter what situation we come from.  We have different versions of what those terms might be, but they all have a common thread.  When life takes a person to a place they don't necessarily plan on, we feel this gravity of a mistake or something has gone wrong.  This can often be disheartening and discouraging to a person, but can cause the rudimentary human trait to reason why this happens. 

Going through trials and tribulations creates a sense of reality.  The hardest parts in our lives train us to form gratitude and a sense of humility.  Sometimes the obstructions, our weariness, our experiences, and our situation in life can change the course, but you get the education of the adventure.  Life is fickle and subject to change no matter what outlines or planning we put into it.  Buddhists say that you have to rest with the fact that nothing is permanent, and that is a hard thing to swallow.  As humans, we love to cling onto everything, but you can't take everything with you.  Learning to let go is the hardest part and even if you dedicate most of your life learning that discipline, you still may never truly get it.  The true learning experience is that we can stopping worrying about what needs to happen and focus on being flexible as a person.  You can achieve your goals, even though there are some curves and obstacles you must travel along the way.  Learning to enjoy the trip is the best part of living.