the world as it is and was
Today, on what would have been my mother's 78th birthday, I found myself thinking of Easter. Obviously, it's still a little ways off, one of those years I would have been thrilled, as a kid, to have it so close to my birthday at the end of the month and not hers at the beginning. The latter usually meant a celebration at my aunt's usual Easter dinner with cake. This was an event I missed in later years, first just because it didn't work out schedule-wise (and typically I already had another springtime visit planned or they would come in for my birthday.) Later, because of a ridiculous social rift in that side of the family that got even more ridiculous following the death of both my mom and my aunt in the same year. Also, admittedly the subsequent Trumpification of much of that side among the older ones that we watched in horror from afar that did not make me especially want to hang out with them anyway. Including an older cousin, not always the brightest, who spent the summer of 2020 writing racist comments during BLM protests that kept showing up for me on FB til I unfriended and blocked him. (thankfully, my dad's side is very liberal, barring a couple who are not local anyway, one of whom I also had to block on socials.)
Nevertheless, my mother continued our childhood Easter traditions even into adulthood. As kids, there was, of course, lots of candy. Also small gifts usually, and some years depending on family financials, larger ones. One year, I got roller skates. Another year, a 10-speed bike. Sometimes it was things like sticker books or nail polish or Cheap Trick cassettes. As a teenager into adulthood, things like candles, bath lotions and gels. Later, the years I wasn't home, she would send or leave me money to buy some candy or a treat and assemble my own Easter basket. One year, the last one, in 2016 where she was still in good health, when I brought home a work friend home for the holiday, she made both of us small baskets with bunnies from the thrift store tucked inside amidst candy..
Over the past few weeks, J has brought me chocolate eggs on a few occasions, so the springtime nostalgia comes in small bites. My sister mentioned on FB how much my mom would have hated the world right now, but how much she would have embraced it with her usual humor. I think of this a lot in the last few months--about both of them. How distressing it is for me when I am less sure of impact, and how much more it would be for them, as people who depended on retirement savings and social security. Or even just bout the decline of the world since the pandemic. I regularly took some relief that my mother was already gone by early 2020 to not worry about us being out in the world. Occasionally, I wonder about my dad, who had turned 81 the year he died and the things that befell him the last months, when he had been less active and out in the world b/c of the pandemic (and therefore subject to stiffness, pain, sciatica, etc.--afflictions of inactivity that did not help at all when hospitalized Were they the cause or the effect? Those final days in the ICU, everyone masked and the covid signs on all the rooms. I did not get sick then, even in the thick of it, but got incautious afterwards, and of course got sick in January (not necessarily covid, by then much less testing happening) after the first New Years celebration in years.
Still I take refuge in the spring and its celebrations after the long winter. In a few weeks, everything will be blooming, though it seems tentative now since our warmer days have been followed by chilly ones. It seems impossible. Since I've already celebrated by getting the plum blossom tattoo on my arm, I'm thinking maybe I'll be able to get back in to get some more magnolias across my shoulder. The sleeve is coming along swimmingly and I may be able to finish it before the end of the year. When I was trying out temporary tattoos a few years back, I was only planning on one or two, and a friend of my mother scoffed and said my mother would have hated them. I actually think my mother, who loved butterflies and flowers, would have adored them and encouraged me to get even more...lol...
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