I waxed poetic about holiday traditions in this past week’s BlogHer Family newsletter. When I wrote that piece, I had no idea that yesterday’s Easter celebration would be such a blast. I was actually feeling nostalgic and homesick when I wrote it. We switch off where we are each year for the Big Holidays, and it was our turn to stay in Ohio versus going home to be with my family in Pennsylvania.
I felt those sad twinges of adulthood knowing that I would miss Sunrise Service outdoors at my parents’ church and breakfast in the fellowship hall. There would be no Easter basket full of candy — that I don’t even eat — sitting for me on the hearth of their fireplace. There would be no long walk around The Farm, snapping pictures of spring in progress. It’s not that my husband’s family isn’t wonderful; I just miss mine even more when holidays come around.
Yesterday, however, was possibly the best Easter of my adult life. In my newsletter blurb, I had written that sometimes we carry over the holiday traditions from our families — and sometimes we make new ones. Well, yesterday? We made new ones. Really, really fun new ones. Like laugh-so-hard you nearly pee your pants new ones.
In the future of Easters in Ohio, we will buy cheap kites at the dollar store and pray that it’s so windy, the kites repeatedly break end up in trees — causing us to run all over the yard, laughing and howling and making my mother-in-law’s neighbors think we’re crazy.
And then, once the kites break and the tails are thus free for use, we will become ninjas.
Then the boys will take a great photo together and, as a reward, get to be as silly as they want. Maybe even Easter Zombie silly.
To wind things down, one Easter Ninja and one Booey will put on a duet at the piano, channeling some John Travolta-esque disco moves from time to time.
The good day was also helped along by the fact that the boys were gems in church. And my skirt fit.
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in missing what you don’t have, what you’re missing at any given time. Days like yesterday remind me about the importance of living in the moment, blooming where you’re planted. It’s not that I didn’t miss my family and our back-home traditions yesterday; I did. But being present in the awesome, laughable, crazy-lovable antics of the rest of my family was equally important to me, to my husband, to my boys.
I hope someday the boys look back and remember the fun we had on the Easter of 2012. I know I will.
