E-ster

[lillibet]

We jumped out of bed and had traditional hot cross buns for breakfast and threw on our Easter finery to head down to First Church for services. That was a lot of fun--the music for Easter is so triumphant, and there was a great moment, when the choir finished the anthem and one of the children in the congregation cried out "Yay!" Molly was having fun...at one point she paraphrased the angel's message to the women at the tomb as "Jesus has a new outfit. Go you and do likewise!" and added "Now, this is a religion I can live with."

During the service, I got a call from a friend who's been trying to reach me for about twenty-four hours. She's in the middle of a long-distance motorcycle trip that has had some ups and downs, so I slipped out to take the call, not wanting to miss it if she were calling to say she was stranded and needed help. Fortunately, she's fine, she just needed the number of a mutual friend in that area, since she's looking at the weather report and thinking that ditching the bike and flying home would be the better part of valor.

After the service wrapped up, jason237 and I skipped coffee hour to come home and get dinner started. The plan was that bex77 would give my parents a ride up to our place after picking up a few last minute items for dinner. jason237 and I got the lamb in the oven and were making progress toward being ready for guests when the phone rang. bex77's purse had been snatched in the parking lot of Whole Foods. She had called the police, but needed someone to go fetch audioboy's keys from him. After thinking for a moment, I called muffyjo and sent her to the rescue. Shortly thereafter, she pulled in with my father, followed by jason237's brother, Eric, with my mom in his car--he had randomly appeared as they were all talking to the police. Sadly, bex77 needed to go home to cancel her credit cards and get the locks to their place changed, so she had to miss Easter dinner.

miss_chance and palmwiz arrived and then Eric did a run to Alewife to pick up heliopsis. I fed them all various nibblies (cheeses, salmon ring, salami, nuts, dried fruit, prosciutto, pate, crackers, etc.), served a course of Hungarian mushroom soup and then moved on to dinner (lamb with intense mint sauce courtesy of heliopsis, smoked cheddar and garlic mustard mashed potatoes, Mom's gravy, sugar snaps, and warm spinach salad). By that time, I was getting pretty tired and the headache I'd woken up with was coming back in stronger and stronger waves. But it was great to see people enjoy the food and everyone helped, especially jason237 and Mom. Pushing 80 and she can still clean up a kitchen like nobody's business!

For dessert we had miss_chance's fabulous apple pie with cranberries and pecans and a wonderful creamy tart covered in gorgeous glazed fruit that Eric had brought. jason237 decided that this was the moment to open the last bottle of the Chateau Belingard Monbazillac that we picked up in France in 2001 and that added a lovely sweet finish to the meal.

I helped with clean up and put together a leftovers package (yes, derspatchel, it does seem to be a tradition) for Mom & Dad to take down to bex77 and audioboy, which they did. Eric needed to leave, but wanted to give us our Christmas presents--a set of lovely Japanese bowls and a marinator-device for me and a lined jean jacket for jason237 that is a twin to one he bought for himself and the same style/brand of jacket that the two of them wore when they were boys, which I thought was a really sweet gift.

The others stayed and we had a very pleasant hour or so of post-prandial conversation before miss_chance pled papers to grade and so the party broke up, but not before muffyjo gave me a really funny and sweet card and helped to load the last of the wine glasses into the dishwasher. Then I had a really nice hour alone, despite my rapidly worsening headache. I started to nap on the couch, but the rents came back and chatted with me for a while and Mom held my head like she used to do when I was little, which was very soothing, but didn't actually lessen the pain. So I went to bed.

I was almost asleep when jason237 came in to say that he had talked to Great-Aunt Alice to get an update on Great-Uncle Jack, who's been in the hospital for a while, unable to swallow. They've put in a feeding tube and determined that it's esophageal cancer and don't believe he will ever come home again. It's all very sad--they are some of our very favorite relatives. jason237 asked if she would like us to come, but she said no, thank you, but please no. I encouraged him to call her back tomorrow to make sure that she knows we would like to hear when he passes and to attend any service that might be held. It would be a privilege to celebrate his life.

By then my headache had surrendered to the power of ibuprofen and now I'm awake.