It Was Crazy. It Was Fun. It Was Good. God, I'm Tired

Taylor, Billy, Shayla.

Hank, Taylor, Billy.

Lily, Gibson.

Potato Salad.

Salad with beans.

Collards and mustards with tomatoes and onions.

Bread.

Food. Billy and Taylor. They were not mad at each other. I swear.

Easter Eggs.

More.

"I Came Out Of A Chicken Butt."


Grilled grouper.
Mr. Moon caught it, cleaned it, and cooked it.

Owen on his mother's back, playing with May.

Jason and Gibson

Owen egg-decorating.

My heart.

More eggs.

Every picture I got of Waylon was a complete blur. Sorry. He and Owen spent a great deal of time chasing each other around the back yard.


At one point I said to Mr. Moon, "I now understand why old people buy those RV's and take off."

Phew.

And tomorrow we'll all meet up again at Lily's and Owen will hunt the eggs that the Easter Bunny will hide for him. And there will be ham. And angel biscuits. And after that, Mr. Moon and I are going RV shopping.

JUST KIDDING!

(Maybe)

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. Jessie and Vergil- we missed you so. And you know it.

Gifts. Chickens. Eggs. Easter

Roses that I have discovered in the yard which have never bloomed before, a white wisteria seed that Lis brought me, a tiny creamer bottle for fairy flowers and a book, both sent by Bethany.

All gifts.

And I planted the seeds for bottle gourds and heirloom cucumbers Bethany sent me as well as the zinnia and sunflower seeds. And I settled the wisteria seed into that pot and watered it well. I love gifts that say, "I know you. Here, grow this."
I love gifts that spring out of nowhere, red roses so deep in color that blood running from a vein couldn't touch it.

But my hens. Oh, they are not gifting me. Where are they laying their eggs? Darn those hens. Scared of snakes in the hen house and not one egg in the fern in the last two days. I don't have time to watch them all day long as they go from one part of the yard to another, doing whatever it is that hens do.
They are withholding their eggs from me and it's almost Easter.
It's not like they sit on those eggs and are protecting their soon-to-be-chicks.
No, they lay and then they leave.
Not one damn good mother in the bunch.

Perhaps they are just providing me with an Easter Egg hunt.
And perhaps Easter Egg hunts are nothing more than a very, very old dance between humans and chickens to find the eggs the chickens lay so profusely in woods and leaves and old sheds and ferns and wherever it is that chickens lay.

And what any of this has to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ is beyond me.
Or chocolate for that matter.
Or some sort of pink protein served at Easter dinner (ham, salmon, rare lamb) or...Peeps!
Or bunny rabbits! What do bunny rabbits have to do with the resurrection of our Lord and Savior?

Mmmm.
Probably no more than trees have to do with the birth of Baby Jesus.
Or Lay-Away at Walmart.

Sometimes I feel so sorry for Jesus that it makes me want to steal him out of the manger

and send him to public school and tuck him into bed every night and tell him that it's not his job to save the world.
Just be a boy, I'd tell him.
Just be a sweet man, I'd say.
Just be a really, really smart man and know how much your mama loves you.

And maybe he'd look at me with eyes like, really? and I'd look back at him with eyes like REALLY and he'd stick his thumb in his mouth and turn over and I'd reach under his shirt and lightly scratch his back and hum a little song to him and I wouldn't leave his bedside until he fell asleep and then I'd kiss his little Jesus curls and on Easter, I'd fix him up a basket with jelly beans and chocolate bunnies and chickens that you could wind up and set down and watch hop, hop, hop across the floor and leave it by his bed so that he'd wake up in the morning and find it and he wouldn't have any fear of being crucified at all.
And then we'd go hunt eggs that our hens had left us. Somewhere. It might take all day, but we'd find them.

Oh. And no one would have to wear a crucifix around their neck and churches wouldn't have to have that horrible statue of Jesus with his bleeding hands and feet, his ribs all poking out, his head tilted to the side, his eternity-seeing eyes staring off into space and little children wouldn't have to see that, none of them.
Especially not Jesus himself.

And maybe on Easter Morning there would be a new litter of baby rabbits to cuddle and stroke, maybe there would be a nest full of just-hatched peeps to wonder at.
I know boys.
And if there was a Jesus he was a boy once. And I think he would have liked that.

Well. I've just picked basil and my hands smell of it, stink of it, and I'm going to go peel and mush garlic and they'll stink even more.

I have a good imagination, I'm a good cook, and I've had a weekend full of gifts.

Ain't nothing wrong with that.

Not one damn thing.

The Friday Round-Up

When Diane Rhem does hers on NPR, she has a panel of experts. I have a panel of me. There may be "language" in this post, so be prepared.

Although I have a neurosis about making phone calls to almost everyone these days (it used to just be "official" calls like making appointments but it has progressed to dreading even calling friends) I had no problem yesterday calling a new local church which has sent out at least a dozen fliers announcing their opening on Sunday for an Easter service. They guarantee child and youth services and "genuine relationships" among other things. After I got the one yesterday with a picture of the white-man hippie Jesus arising from the tomb with wings on the back of his robed body, I called them and got their answering machine. I left a message with my name telling them that if I wanted to go to their service, I probably would have been alerted to the time and date by the first two or three fliers and to stop already. I got a call back from the pastor this morning and he said he'd take my name off the mailing list, which I thanked him for. I wanted to say a lot more, but was in a rush getting my husband out of town and so I didn't and the son-of-a-bitch got me by muttering a hasty "God bless you" before he hung up the phone.
ACK!

I have an entire weekend to myself and am looking forward to it with great glee. It is, without a doubt, the most beautiful time of the year here and I intend to spend most of my daytime time outdoors, weeding. This may not sound like much fun but for me, it hardly gets any better. I put a book on tape into the antique Walkman and wreck my fingernails in the warm dirt. To me, that is heaven and no promise of freaking angels sitting around playing harps or sitting at the right hand of God can compare. God's side must be pretty crowded and I'm going to have my yard all to myself.

My daughter's wedding is in three weeks and WE ARE NOT READY. We went out twice this week to get stuff and I have ordered a dress on E-Bay and dammit, it better fit and it better look great because I am having a terrible time with this shopping thing. When I put on real woman clothes I feel like I'm in drag and I don't want to feel like I'm in drag at my daughter's wedding. She and I have such diverse taste in clothing that if she wasn't born at home and wasn't the spitting image of her father's sisters, I'd think she'd been switched at birth for my real child. But really, we're having a good time although she's getting stressed out as the date approaches. She called me today from work, weeping because more of the groom's family is going to be there than ours and she doesn't know them. My husband asked me what was wrong when I got off the phone with her and I said, "She's a bride. She's supposed to be freaking out and she's doing her motherfucking job."
"Oh," he said.
I do understand her anxiety and I have a bit myself but as I keep assuring her, all will be well, and she will end up married. At least she gets to go on a honeymoon.

I think my kids are going to come out on Sunday to dye Easter eggs. This has nothing to do with the resurrection of our Lord and everything to do with childhood memories and a table full of coffee cups with various shades of dye in them and the joy I take in seeing my kids, adults all, doing a childish thing and having fun doing it. I will make some food and we will eat outside under the blooming Bradford pears and that, my friends, is my idea of a holiday celebration.

I'm sure I'll soon find a few words to say here about Easter and religion and how I have no tolerance for any of it. I am becoming the very worst sort of out-spoken heathen and I feel a need creeping up on me to speak my truth as they say somewhere (where they probably also say things like "thinking outside the box" so you know that's a stupid thing to say) but for right now, I believe I'll just glory in being alive on this, the second day of spring, 2008 and living in a place where it all looks like a picture painted by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light and I'm not kidding.

Happy Spring.