A More Than Good Enough Easter
/Easter was a few days ago. Currently, the dining room table extended to its full 9’ length is covered with the vestiges of all that went into creating a memorable setting for our family Easter Sunday dinner:
a tablecloth with scenes of bunnies frolicking in green grass among colorful spring flowers and butterflies and dragonflies
a vase of cut tulips that are beginning to droop
40 year old Avon bunny candle holders, reminders of my days many years ago when I was an Avon lady. They too await to be gathered up with all of the other Easter decorations that need to be carefully placed in their designated storage containers and placed back on the shelf
my mother’s fine china, service for twelve, which has been hand washed, dried, and stacked at the end of the table where it too waits to be stored in the china cabinet.
The day before Easter, I ventured out for one last purchase as I prepared for hosting Easter dinner: paper plates and paper napkins.
Easter morning the girls arrived to help me prepare dinner. As I was chopping up eggs to go in the potato salad, I made an announcement to my daughters as Keicha was frosting the cake she made while Amy was making peeps on skateboards that would bring a bit of whimsy and fun to grandchildren. “We will be using paper plates and paper napkins this year, but we will use real cutlery rather plastic.” They responded loudly and in unison, “Mother, no! We will not! “ One then said and was quickly seconded by the other, “Aren’t you the one who hates paper plates for holiday celebrations? Aren’t you the one that says it just isn’t civilized if you don’t use the best dishes for family celebrations?”
“Yes, I know, but I’m old and tired and it’s so much work.”
I was voted down. We would use the very best dishes and cloth napkins. Actually, I was glad they insisted that we hold to tradition. After all, when they were all small children we got out the good china, the set I bought just prior to my marriage to their father 55 years ago in anticipation of all those family traditions being carried on in my own family, . They were babies, toddlers, or young children when I began making sure on special occasions dinner was served properly with the best dishes. Thankfully, they did not let me drop the tradition I started and sustained all these years when we had those rare occasions when we could be together as a family, even if some treasured family members could not be with us.
Traditions held. today, two days after Easter, I am doing cleanup.
This morning, as I started putting Easter away for another year, I noticed a book has been left on the table. Bumble bees in flight are on the cover. The title of the book is: Early Learning, Touch and Feel.” The book teaches the alphabet. Auntie Amy had been reading it after dinner with my youngest grandchild who turns five next Saturday.
He was the star of the day as the other grandchildren are now adults. He searched for Easter eggs, and picked out his favorite jellybeans. I asked which ones he liked best. “Red,” he said. “Well, red are my favorite too,” I said. “Red jelly beans are among my favorite things in this life.” We have that in common.
He wanted to know our favorite colors. Most of us love red. He does too. He loves to cuddle with Auntie Amy and tells Auntie Keicha she must come see his room. “He’s made some improvements.” His words.
Reflective, I pause my cleanup to savor the day once again.
I bask in the glow that comes from remembering how much life this house had within it for Easter Sunday. Chaos seemed to reign at times as I tried to remember how to get the ham cooked and ready at the same time the rolls were baking so I could air fry the asparagus at the last minute and get the potato salad transferred from my huge mixing bowl to a serving bowl.
As I did final preparations for our Easter meal, I found myself saying, “Think Sally. What do you need to do next?” Amy said, “Mom you seem to be talking to yourself about thinking instead of just doing what needs to be done next.” “Right Amy. Good observation. That’s what happens when you are old.” With a lot of help, the table was set, the food was prepared, the dinner was served. We all had a wonderful fellowship as we enjoyed fabulous meal. The cleanup took hours it seemed, but that too was worth it.
Easter is always a bittersweet time for me.
Easter almost always comes in April. My daughter Julie was born in April. She is linked with the season in ways that are so intertwined that the day of Easter itself is a bittersweet day for me. The last time I saw her alive was Easter Day 2010.
We’d had a huge celebration on the day before. Nearly all of the children were there with their children. I think we had twelve grandchildren and eleven adults in attendance. We celebrated three upcoming birthdays. Julie’s thirty-fourth was one of them. That night three of my grandchildren, two age twelve and one age eight had dyed Easter eggs at my kitchen with help their moms and Aunt Julie. Many photos were snapped. Many happy memories were made.
The next morning, Jim had to get out the battery cables to charge one of the cars before the girls could leave. I don’t remember which car’s battery had died, but I remember that with all the last minute packing of cars and charging of a dead battery, I didn’t actually hug Julie good-bye as she drove off with her car loaded with sisters and nieces and a nephew to head back to northern Colorado. I stood on the driveway waving and blowing kisses never imagining I’d never see her alive again in this life.
this year we had those tender moments of remembrance…
as we always do, but mostly we celebrated being together with so much laughter, tomfoolery, deep conversation, and conversation not so deep.
The Easter celebration this year was the first time I’d had most of my chicks around my table since the long season of separation imposed by the Pandemic began. I had wondered so often during those days when we would ever all be together again in my home.
This weekend that liminal space, the space between what once was that we believed was a given for family celebrations, and what became a long season of waiting with such longing to be seated around a table sharing a meal, was transversed. Such joy! Such gratitude. I hope I never take these precious times of family gathering for granted.
Such celebrations do require bringing out the best china and the cloth napkins. They are not throwaway times. Family time around the table are times to be treasured, remembered, tended and carefully nurtured as we look forward to the next time we hope to be reunited.
The book “Early Learning” left on the table by the five year old and his forty-eight year old aunt speaks volumes to me as I reflect on a devotion entitled “Good Enough” in Kate Bowler’s recent devotional called by the same title, “Good Enough.”
She writes of those of us who have more past behind us than future before us. She says we must allow ourselves “gentle honesty” and accept that the God who numbers the hairs on our head also numbers our days. I am very aware of my finitude in this season of my life.
Leon, my youngest grandchild keeps asking me how old I am as he seems to try to grasp how he at five could know a grandmother who is seventy-seven. He counts the decades. He can do that at his young age. I too count the decades and know I may not have many left unless I’m like my mother who lived to be nearly one hundred and four. No matter the number of days I have before me, I do not see as much future ahead as I have past behind me.
At the table we have our early learning about family and tradition and love and respect and all that goes into trying to create functional families despite our dysfunctions.
The five year old and the grandmother have this in common according to Kate Bowler as she relates a study by Dr. Adults Gawande: we are both at “that beautiful, precious core,” the place where the young and the old most want to be, “spending time with the closest friends and family.”*
In early learnings, my grandson seems to have learned “to love what already is. Our nearest and dearest. The people we couldn’t get rid of if we tried.” *
And who would want to. They are the “nearest and dearest to my heart.” We are far from perfect. I’m not sure any of us ever had reaching perfection as our life ambition. We just try to live the best we can day by day. We clean up well. We have good manners. We know which fork to pick up etc. We complain and say “I’m not ironing the tablecloth. Mother, why don’t you have the tablecloths ironed already?” It wouldn’t be a holiday if that conversation didn’t take place. It’s been one we’ve had for years.
I gave up ironing tablecloths during the pandemic, and Leon asks me why we always have one on the table, not noticing it isn’t even ironed if they stop by for an informal dinner. He thinks it’s all rather silly to put a cloth on a perfectly good table.
In the year 2020, I mused on Easter Sunday that I had learned that we could have a wonderful Easter without bunnies, bouquets, and bonnets, but oh how I missed having family around me.
This Easter we put on our finest, and we tease, and we hope to capture some good photos. My “kids” now in their forties and fifties won’t sit still and smile properly for the family photo just like they did when they were little, so we did not get a proper photo. Some things never change no matter how old they are. They remember pranks and know exactly how to cause a sibling to cringe. “Don’t touch my collarbone!”
For me, the times I am blessed to have with family are more than enough. Yes, I wish we all could be together, but sometimes time and distance and schedules do allow such visits. My heart is full of the love we shared as we celebrated this Easter together.
I am in the season of being grateful for what is, no matter what that “is” may be. Who could ever want more? If I have days surrounded by those I love best that is more than “good enough” for me.
P. S. Good enough whether we use the good china and cloth napkins or not.
quote from “Good Enough - 40ish Devotionals For A Life of Imperfection” by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie
