Consolations

I find it odd to be wished a Happy Easter, and not because I don't observe it. I grew up in a Catholic family, going to Catholic schools, and Holy Week was a grim time at the end of the solemnity of Lent. Death and grief, torture and injustice, with just a whiff of redeeming hope right at the very end.

While I certainly had a white or pastel hat and dress, new only if last year's dress no longer fit, there was no sense of festivity. It was a purely religious observance, not at all a social holiday. Sometimes a grandmother or aunt&uncle would appear for dinner on that Sunday, but it wasn't a tradition, just a family meal. Or we might take a lily plant out to the grandmothers in Windsor and La Salle in the afternoon, but never stayed long. Food was an afterthought, ham only because it was convenient.

The sole consolation for the extended time spent in church on hard pews or kneeling benches, was my* basket with chocolate and candies. It was welcome, certainly, if not quite adequate consolation. Especially once in Catholic schools, where I spent an hour in daily mass throughout Lent. There really is nothing like mass surrounded by a bunch of pre-teens. Not in terms of noise or misery, teachers prevented that, only a generalized, albeit specific, sort of distastefulness. A wooden purgatory, with snot. Spending that time in church with my mother, painful in a different way. Part of why I joined the choir, gave me a purpose, and I sat far from my parents. The music for Lent and Easter helped greatly, as well as the candles. I still have a soft spot for a space lit entirely with candles.

Easter for an agnostic adult? Perhaps in a year with a solid winter, a marker for hope of relief. In a warm, dry winter, a blip of distant annoyance, and an opportunity to add a half-price sheep (stuffed) to the household. And to deal with a spouse's own dogmatic issues with family, poor soul. ADD and a dull, mandatory churchgoing do not mesh well. I try to be supportive, without urging toward my own, rather extreme - if justified, estrangement from kith, if not kin.

I wandered over, and got a chocolate bunny, solid, as consolation. Well, I have always called him my Solid Chocolate Bunny, a beneficence for previous suffering, and the same goodness all the way through.

Moby is asleep at my feet, D strokes his back, and the cat's ears... relax even more. "OH, I'm in good hands" his ears seem to say. Yes, well.


Smells faintly of fake chocolate scent.




The years creep by, and we abide.



*One year, my basket was retrieved from the attic, only to find it had been used as a nest for mice. My mother threw it out, over my objections. I though it could be cleaned, she thought not. The new one was not as nice, not at all.

Oh, the green fake 'grass', and the chocolate covered malted milk balls. I could have dealt with the mouse poop pellets...