Sylvia's Journal

We stuck to our tradition of an Easter ‘egg’ hunt party, now in its 32^nd year since we initiated it in 1985, when I was pregnant with Tessa. Except for our years in Afghanistan, we never missed an occasion to bring our dearest nearest friends and neighbors together to celebrate what for us has always been a spectacular time: spring, Easter, the rising of the spirit (or Jesus as you wish), of new beginnings, of pruning and of the raking of leaves to discover the green sprouts underneath.

It is always tricky to schedule the party because of my travel, and our ability to get our act together in time: the invitation which is Axel’s (creative) domain, the creation of the invite list, which we still do manually, the buying of supplies to fill the Easter bags (now less sugar and more seed packets) and then the hiding.

In all these 32 years we have never perfected our game, but we spend less and less time on getting ready, being less compulsive about everything having to be right. This is the joy of getting older. These things matter less and less, and the company matters more and more.

We got reconnected with a member of the Dutch family that put up a spectacular Easter show on its big estate in the town I grew up in. We are related, my mother and his dad were cousins. It was an event I looked forward to every year and which may have contributed to the fact that some important events in my life (though not all) happened around Easter time. We had last seen each other at Easter in 1961 or thereabouts so I didn’t expect to recognize him, but I did, easily. He came late, with his partner. All the other guests had left. The sun which had lifted our spirits all day was losing its strength, so we lit a fire in our fire pit and sat around it, getting to know each other all over again, with Tessa and Axel being introduced to this found Dutch relative who lives in our neighborhood.