Changing Traditions

It used to be that we’d fly down to Reno to visit my mom and dad for Easter. After my dad died and she moved to Carson City, we started visiting her there. We usually lucked out in that my children’s spring break lined up well with my niece’s spring break and the kids could have some nice cousin time together.

My mom loved making dyed Easter eggs with the kids the day before and putting together baskets filled with stuffed animals and chocolates, finger nail polish and toys. The kids would spend hours taking turns hiding the eggs inside and out. One nice thing about a Nevada Easter is you can pretty much count on sunshine. Here? Not so much.

After my mom died, we continued the tradition of going down to Carson City and visiting with my brother and his girls. Last year, my daughter stayed with her cousins at his house while I stayed with my son in a hotel which got us the use of a pool for all of us. This year, we opted for staying home for a number of reasons, the chief of which is we have a family reunion scheduled for August, and I know I’ll be seeing them in Montana. And, my nephew is getting married in Atlanta in September, so we’ll see them again. Chiefly, though, my two kids are in different schools and their spring breaks aren’t the same. AND, we agreed to host one of my daughter’s best friend’s on her ten day visit from Cape Cod. Given all the upcoming family time and the logistics of breaks, I just couldn’t deal with planning another trip.

As a UU, I don’t really feel that connected to Easter in a religious sense. It’s all about eggs, bunnies, springtime and tradition for me. I grew up getting a new dress for Easter, getting to wear it to church on Easter morning and celebrating it as a family sort of thing. (And eating a lot of egg salad sandwiches.) As I set the table last night, I felt that sense of bittersweet loss that comes with the recognition that traditions morph and change over time. My mom would never have used the Desert Rose dishes for a special celebration–those were her ‘everyday’ dishes. And they’ve become one of my every day set. (I think I’ll need to do an entire blog post about my ‘thing’ for dishes.) The pink depression era glasses are from my Aunt Lou’s collection. I remember a table she set for a fancy tea once that used them and some amazingly beautiful tea cups. But for me, using the fine china would have been overkill, and it wouldn’t have spoken so clearly to my heart as those little red roses.