“I see great things in baseball.”

Easter was wonderful. The sun was shining the whole day in celebration. Dinner was perfect. Our table was at a window overlooking the water. Just for the fun of it, we brought a light up bunny from the Easter basket to decorate the table. Miss Bunny was pink with flowered fabric hands and ears, a lace collar and lights which blinked and she was quite the conversation piece. People pointed and laughed and chatted with us about our dinner guest. We took Miss Bunny’s picture as a memento of her big day. We each had a few drinks, generous drinks, and the food was delicious. My plate was empty with only a bit of gravy to prove there had been a dinner. The restaurant was totally filled, but we had a favorite couple seated near us. They were old, and the wife had to help her husband sit down. She was wearing a bright yellow spring coat and the best hat ever, round and flowered. I took a picture as she was taking it off at the table-the woman is smiling from ear to ear. They ordered martinis, and I liked that couple even more. After dinner, over dessert, we all agreed we loved our Easter tradition of dinner at the Ocean House.

Today is baseball’s opening day. Last year my Sox were in last place at the end of the season so any other place would be an improvement. The game is against the Yankees and starts at 1. I’ll wear my Red Sox sweatshirt and cheer like crazy. I am an eternal optimist. The Globe has been filled with articles discussing this year’s team and the toxicity of last year’s. Jackie Bradley Jr. is 23 and never got as high as Triple A, but he’s going to be in left field today and is, “Ready to start the adventure.” You have to love a baseball player who still thinks of baseball as a game, an adventure, and not a business. His fiancé and his parents will be at the game to watch his debut. Welcome to Boston, Jackie!

I remember the baseball of my childhood. It was when baseball sang of summer, of pick-up games in fields, of the whack of the wooden bats and the taunting from the outfield, “No Batter, no batter.” Baseball was seldom complicated: three up, three down and nine innings or less if we got hot, tired or thirsty. We shared gloves so everyone would have one. We only had one ball, and if it got lost, the game was halted while we all hunted for it in the tall grass beside the field. Bases were whatever we could find, and we’d pace out the distance between them one sneaker heel to toe to the other. We didn’t have umpires, and we’d get impatient at batters who stayed in the box far too long. Safe or out at one of the bases often became an argument, but not a serious argument, and we always settle it fairly so the game could continue. Baseball was easy to love when we were kids.

“Easter tells us that life is to be interpreted not simply in terms of things but in terms of ideals.”

The sun is shining on this Easter morning. The air is still, and the day is getting warmer. No winter coats will cover pastel Easter dresses. I can hear birds singing even though the windows are closed. Yesterday I saw a few buds on one of my bushes. The buds are tiny and closed tightly, but they are another sign that spring is gaining hold.

The alarm rang at 6:15 this morning, and I turned it off and went back to sleep for an hour. I had set it early so I could sneak down my friends’ house and decorate the tree which hangs over their deck: it’s an annual Easter surprise. Though if it’s annual, is it really a surprise? Anyway, when I realized how late it was, I was afraid they’d be awake, but Gracie and I went anyway. The car was covered in frost so I scrapped the windows and off we went. At their house, all the shades were down so they were still abed. I went on the deck and started decorating. One of the giant decorated paper lanterns fell over the deck rail. That meant walking off the deck then all around the outside of the deck and through the underbrush to retrieve it. That was an adventure. The leaves and branches were soaked and sucked up one of my slippers. I had to yank it out of the muck. I found a bird feeder covered in wet leaves and put it on the deck rail. I also saw a mango. I’m still perplexed a bit about the mango, strange spot for one. While I was mucking about, the door opened and out came Darci, their dog. Whoever let her out never looked so I wasn’t caught. I walked back to the deck, petted Darci for a while, hung the lantern then sneaked away. I just got a call thanking me for the surprise and telling me how lovely the tree looks.

I remember so well Easter Sunday mass when I was young. The church was always beautiful and filled with light. The sun shined through the stained glass windows. The dark purple of lent had been replaced by white and all the statues were uncovered. Flowers decorated the floor in front of and all around the altar. I remember the lilies because they were the tallest. The church was always crowded. Women wore hats, fancy hats with veils, small see through veils that went down as far as their eyes. The men wore suits and carried their hats into the church. Little girls wore dresses in pinks and blues and all the different shades of pastel. They wore short white gloves and round hats with ribbons. Their shoes were patent leather, both black and white, and were worn with fancy white socks with lace around the edges. Some boys wore suits, ones with jackets checkered in the front. Others wore white shirts and ties and new pants with deep creases. The shoes were always new and always with laces. The choir sang at Easter. If I had known the word back then, I would have said it was majestic, mass on Easter Sunday.

Happy Easter!

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

Earliest I sloshed my way to the mailbox and then to the driveway to get the papers. My road is slush covered. Tire marks show the route of my paper delivery, and when I got inside, I could see my footprints. It is lightly snowing, slanted and from the northeast, but I can also hear drips on the deck from the roof. The weather for today is rainy and cold with temperatures in the 30′s. I just hope it stays above freezing. The wind was with us all night but has since pretty much disappeared. On the early news was a house which had fallen into the ocean. I suspect it won’t be the last as the rain pits and wears away the dunes. This is just ugly. The only bright spot is I have heat and electricity.

I stood at the back door while the coffee perked. The storm is a bit mesmerizing with the snow coming across rather than down. The railing on the deck outside the door has an inch or more of what used to be snow and is now slush. That slush is the color of cement and Gracie’s paw prints look permanent as if she walked across the new part of a sidewalk. Lots of birds are hovering around the feeder, the squirrel buster feeder. I filled it the other day so there is plenty of seed. All of the birds are gold finches still clad in their dull winter feathers.

March is a difficult month. It doesn’t know whether it wants to be the first spring month or the last month of winter. Easter is at the end of the month so March best make up its mind. Light dresses and pastels don’t work as well with winter coats.

I know they’ll be snow and frost and windshield scraping. I have lived in New England all of my life and haven’t thought about moving anywhere else. Winter is the price we pay for spring and fall, especially fall. All I ask is a sunny day, a winter’s sunny day is fine with me. I know the winter sun is sharper and colder, but sun is sun, and it makes me glad.

“Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.”

The sky got black almost as quickly as in a science fiction movie just before the aliens arrive, but the rain came instead; it fell in torrents. Gracie stayed in the car while I was at my library board meeting, and I had left a window open for her. I don’t think she was thankful. The inside door and the seat were soaked, but Gracie, being both smart and practical, had moved over to the dry side. On the drive home, I splashed through flooded streets and had to be careful about hydroplaning. Right now the day has an eerie light, but it has stopped raining for the meantime. Gracie is resting from her ordeal.

Today is my errand day and I have only finished two of five, but the rain just started again, not so perfect for grocery shopping. How sad that makes me.

I have never been a hat person. My mother sometimes forced one on me at Easter, a hat in a pastel, usually pink or blue, with small flowers. I always felt a bit self-conscious. I’d put up my hood on the coldest days when I walked to school, but I seldom wore a real hat. On rainy days my hair got wet. I remember my mother trying to make me wear one of those silly transparent hats which tie under the chin and fold up to fit into a small pouch. I always thought of them as old lady hats kept by them in oversize purses in case of rain emergencies. I have earmuffs, and I don’t mind wearing them. I have a couple of baseball hats which I actually wear at baseball games to keep the sun at bay. When I lived in Ghana, I had a straw hat I wore for a bit, but I felt like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm so I stopped wearing it. My neighbor across the street always wears a similar hat when she works in the garden. She looks a bit like Ma Kettle working the farm.

I have a hat collection. That always makes me chuckle a bit at the irony.

“It gives one hope, this great strength of Africa”.

Easter Sunday was a wonderful day. The weather was chilly, but that didn’t matter. My friends and I went to our usual restaurant and sat at a window by the water. We looked out and saw across the horizon the light gray sky and below it were small white-capped waves and the light brown sand of the beach. A rock jetty jutted into the water. Some people walked the beach, a couple with dogs. One small dog played as he walked, jumping into the air and chewing on his leash. A family stopped to watch the waves. Their little girl wore a pink wide-brimmed hat with a matching pink purse. Pink was the perfect color against the backdrop of the ocean.

We were dressed up for Easter Sunday as were most of the people in the restaurant. Though I am more comfortable in my grubbies, the day was special so I dressed accordingly. I wore shoes which needed pantyhose, but as I had none, I wore knee highs which were hidden by my dress, and that made me chuckle. It was sartorial splendor with a small nod to quirkiness.

My friends dropped me off at my car, and I went home to take a nap as did they. We intended to watch The Amazing Race together, but it was running late so I just stayed home. The race was in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, and it was so beautiful I decided to add that country to my list of places to visit. The teams took small planes to their destination in the bush, and they flew over a huge flock of flamingoes. From the air, there were so many birds it looked like an ocean of bright pink. The teams landed near a Masai village, and the colors of the cloths the Masai wore and the bead work around the women’s necks were breath-taking. The last team, knowing they were probably going to be eliminated, had the car stop so they could watch a herd of elephants, including a baby, go by them, something they would probably never see again. They weren’t eliminated, but, even better, they made a memory I doubt they’ll ever forget.

“Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.”

I always think Easter Sunday should be sunny and even warm, all the better to show off all those new clothes. It’s cloudy right now, but I think the sun is struggling to break through the grayness. Gracie and I had an adventure earlier this morning. We sneaked down to my friends’ house and decorated the tree near their deck. We do it every year. This year was a streamer of eggs from branch to branch, some wooden rabbits doing gardening hanging off the small branches and decorative eggs on sticks stuck into their pansies right by the door. They haven’t seen them as their backdoor is still closed so they’re not awake yet. This is the only time of year I can see all the way down to the end of the street.

When I was little, Easter morning never had the same degree of excitement as Christmas morning, but we’d still run to find our baskets. We’d munch on jelly beans as we checked out everything one at a time. The chocolate rabbit was always the most prominent standing tall as it did in the basket. There were coloring books and crayons or small toys and always a stuffed animal, usually a rabbit or even a duck, wearing a hat and sometimes a colored vest. We’d play and munch until my mother dragged us away to get ready for mass.

Easter was always a big day in church. The haphazard members of the congregation only went on Christmas and Easter so the pews were filled. I remember the church looked festive on Easter Sunday as lent was finally over. Tall white lilies in pots were on the steps to the altar and by the rail in the front. The statues were uncovered, and the priest wore white. The rest of us wore mostly pastels and hats were a necessary accessory. Men had fedoras and women had hats with veils. Boys had none, but we girls wore hats with flowers or ribbons. The church was awash with colors in every pew.

Some Easter Sundays we’d go to visit my grandparents. The house was filled with my aunts, uncles and cousins. My grandmother always had chocolate for us, usually a small rabbit, as an Easter gift.  We’d run up and down the two sets of stairs chasing each other while the adults stayed in the kitchen on the bottom floor. My grandfather always hid in his room away from the tumult.

My father usually hustled us out the door in the early evening and we’d fall asleep on the way home, exhausted by the festivities of the day and all those stairs.

“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.”

Not a single errand is left. I don’t think I’ve missed a store. All I seem to do is haul bags into the house. Yesterday one errand was grocery shopping, but I timed it so the store was fairly empty. I even had a list, but it still wasn’t fun. The candy store was the best stop.

Today’s weather is almost the same as yesterday’s but without the clear blue sky. Partially cloudy is the forecast. I don’t know why it is never partially sunny.

The Easter bunny comes tonight. We were excited, but it was never close to the excitement of waiting for Santa Claus, and there was no countdown to the big night. In the morning, our baskets would be on the kitchen table or on the table in the living room or sometimes even in our bedrooms. Grass was always at the bottom of the baskets, but I don’t know why. I still don’t. We never questioned a rabbit bringing eggs and candy especially one wearing clothes and standing on his hind legs. That proved to us he wasn’t your average rabbit. The baskets were straw and multi-colored. I think everyone I knew got the same sort of basket. Even now I see the similar ones for sale in all the stores.

New Easter clothes were part of the spring renewal. That they were pastels was a goodbye to winter’s drab colors. We were like spring flowers bursting out in yellow, blue or lilac. When I was little, my mother chose my clothes. No outfit was complete without a hat and white gloves. Shoes were usually patent leather with a small square purse to match. The shoes had one strap across the top that buckled on the side. White ankle socks, sometimes with lace tops, completed the outfit. We used to stand in front of the steps for pictures. All the pictures were in black and white.

“Clothes are inevitable. They are nothing less than the furniture of the mind made visible.”

Today is a perfect spring day on Cape Cod: a bright sun, a deep blue sky and a bit of a chill in the air. My grass is turning green. The forsythia has yellow flowers as bright as the sun. The springs bulbs have all bloomed, and the green tips of flowers are appearing in the front garden. The male goldfinches are almost brilliant yellow. All of the signs say spring.

Even when I was a kid, I didn’t love pouffy dresses for Easter. I remember one year I had my mother buy me a Lois Lane sort of suit. At my grandmother’s I overheard my mother tell my aunt that’s what I wanted when my aunt questioned my choice of an Easter outfit. My sisters and my cousins were bright in pastels with pouff, and I guess I seemed out-of-place.

When I worked, I wore dresses and skirts every day. One time at lunch in the cafeteria, a student came up to me and said she wanted to wear clothes like mine when she grew up. I was thrilled by her compliment. Most of my clothes back then came from small shops which sold dresses from Mexico and India and countries with similar styles. Afer I retired, I seldom visited those shops as I didn’t often have an occasion to wear a dress, but I did buy a new one for a wedding last October. The dress had the same look as back when especially when I added Ghanaian beads and matching earrings.

The clothes I wore in Ghana, always dresses, were mostly made in Ghana. The cloth was beautiful and the colors amazing. I’d sometimes have a dress made with elaborate stitching around the neck called jeremy in those days. Tie-dye was another one of my favorite cloths for a dress. The patterns were intricate with stripes or squares or dots and back then the die was natural. I also had dresses made from batik., and I still have batik I brought back forty years ago.

For Easter this year, I’m wearing the dress I bought for the wedding. It’s a green color which reminds me of spring. I’ll wear the necklace and earrings. I think together, the dress and jewelry, are  smashing!

“C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me.”

Yesterday was an Easter gift. Today we’re back to a sun-less day with white gray skies, but it is still warm at 56° so I have a few upstairs windows open. I awoke this morning to the sounds of birds. I can’t think of a more delightful way to greet the day.

Dinner was spectacular yesterday. We sat in the bar waiting for our table and from the windows we could see only water making us feel as if we were on an Easter cruise. Our dinner table was in the main dining room by a window where we could see the shells and sand. We watched the tide come in along the break-way. We toasted the day. It deserved recognition.

Mondays have a stigma attached. I don’t have to drag myself out of bed any more, but Mondays still have nothing redeemable. Friday used to be my favorite day, but now I have no favorites. I like them all except Monday. I don’t even have much energy today, but I do need to get out for a few things, the in-between stuff I run out of before a massive grocery run. I need bread.

The day after Easter meant a half eaten bunny in my basket. I ate the small stuff, the jelly beans and hard eggs, but I left the bunny until last. He was always the star.

I have a special fondness for sugar cookies, and for most big holidays my mother would make batches of them. I remember waiting and waiting until they were cool enough so I could eat one, unfrosted. I remember the bottoms of the cookies were always a light brown, and when I first made my own, that’s what I looked for when I checked to see  if they done. For Easter my mother made eggs and rabbits. Sometimes we’d help decorate. The rabbits were just white, but it was the eggs which brought out our creativity. We’d try and frost them with designs and lots of colors. I was never very good with the decorator bag. More frosting got on me than the cookies, but it really never mattered how they looked. They always tasted just right.

“Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.”

Today is glorious, filled with sun, warmth and the songs of birds. Not a branch stirs in the stillness of the day. Earlier, I sneaked down the street to my friends’ house, added decorations to their egg tree from last year, new glass birds, and left their Easter baskets. Well, I didn’t really leave them, the Easter Bunny did. I just helped a little. My street is just so quiet that Gracie and I saw no one on our little jaunt.

From my window here, I can see bright yellow goldfinches at the feeders. Their color seems to celebrate the joy of spring and the arrival of Easter. Today is just so beautiful.

Happy Easter!

We always went to mass early on Easter. We’d don our new clothes, my mother would snap a few pictures and off we’d go. It was agony to leave our baskets behind, but we’d sneak a few jelly beans in pockets or purses. The jelly beans of my day were huge, and they all tasted the same no matter the color. We didn’t mind. I’m not even sure we noticed. The highlight of every basket was the giant chocolate bunny standing in the middle. I was an ears first eater. The straw was always green plastic, and the bunny once I’d gnawed on it would sometimes have grass stuck to it. We carried those baskets all around with us until it was time to leave for my grandparents’ house. My mother was one of eight children, only two of whom still lived at home, so on the big holidays my grandmother’s house was filled. Cousins were plentiful. My grandmother always had Easter treats for each of us so we felt the loss of our baskets less keenly. On the really nice days, encouraged by parents who decided we needed air, we’d sit outside on the stoop always careful not to get stains on our new clothes. We’d stay all afternoon.

I swear that all the Easters dawned bright and sunny and warm. I know that’s not true, but that’s how I remember them.