My mother would call today a pretty day. It’s filled with sunshine and birds and the bluest of skies. I keep going out on the deck to take in the morning. On days like today, Coffee takes forever to finish.

I used to be the oldest grandchild. Now, I’m the oldest cousin. While my sisters are close to the cousins, I’m not. Age is mostly the reason as I am old enough to be the parent of many of them. We don’t see each other often. I don’t get up there much, and they never get down here. Amazingly, though, we share a lot in common. We are a family of huggers. All of my cousins are huggers. Even my nephews are. A kiss on the cheek is always part of our hugging. I like that about my family. We are all Christmas fiends. We love every part of Christmas. It was handed down to us from each of our parents. Baseball and the Red Sox are another passion we share. Some of my cousins and I are even going to Colorado in June to watch the Sox play the Rockies. We have it all planned. We’re going to one game then getting together for huge parties to watch the rest. My sister’s house will be family central. Two of her kids have taken the whole week off from work. We’ll be loud. We always are. Parties are part of our genetic make-up, and we love to give them. One cousin always hosts the special parties, the ones that are milestones. I never miss those. It gives me a chance to celebrate and to catch up with everyone. We also share a love of music though our tastes vary greatly. We do part company at karaoke. They love it. I don’t. They get up and sing. I can’t carry a note. We love food. The most famous family dish is my uncle’s sausage cattiatore, and it passes from generation to generation. We all make it. Our parties are noted for groaning tables.

My age and experiences may be far different than those of any of my cousins, but I know when we get together, no matter how long since I last saw them, they’ll be glad to see me, and I’ll get lots of hugs.

The sun arrived late this morning. It brought blue skies but not a lot of warmth. It’s a sweatshirt day. I’ll be out and about for a bit later as I have a long list of errands I’ve been saving for one swoop. I might even take a ride afterwards. It seems like a perfect day to meander.

The neighborhood is abuzz of activity. The warmer weather brings all the snow birds back from sunnier climes. The neighbor who lives behind me is here. Earlier in the week he cut down the huge oak tree which had been there since long before his house was built. For the last three days I’ve heard the hum of his saw as he cuts the pieces down to size. The neighbors beside me are here for the weekend. They are weatherproofing their deck. Across the street, Herb and Joanne are back from Florida where they’ve been since early February. Yesterday I saw Herb out cleaning his yard of winter debris. Soon enough he’ll be mowing his lawn. The quiet of wintertime is gone for now.

Gracie spends more and more of her day outside. She lies in the sun in the back of the yard or on the deck lounge when she’s seeking a bit of creature comfort. I know that feeling and can barely wait until every day is sunny, until every day is warm. The furniture is uncovered, candles are hanging off the tree branches, the debris from winter winds has been cleared off the deck and the storage bins are gone. Everything is ready for deck days and for dinners in the warmth of the evening and the glow of candlelight.

The paper mentioned the soil is 50°, and we are two weeks ahead on the growing cycle. I knew that when I saw my forsythia this morning. It is a glorious yellow, full and beautiful. It was a housewarming present thirty three years ago.

Life used to be so much simpler. This morning I went looking for the USB connection for my camera. It wasn’t in its usual spot, the place where I keep most of the connectors, like the ones for my cell phone and my IPod. While rummaging, I did find three orphan wires which must connect to something or I wouldn’t have saved them. I did find my camera’s wire but I’m still curious about the other three.

When I was little, just about everything connected to outlets on the wall.  A couple of lights and the TV shared an outlet in the living room. My mother had several cords connected in the kitchen. Her Mixmaster, her radio, sometimes the iron and the fry pan were all plugged into a single outlet. They piggybacked. Cameras were one of the few devices with batteries. The first camera I remember had a huge flashbulb screwed into a circle of silver. It was bright enough to light up the room. The shadow of the flash stayed in my eyes for ages, and I remember my father oohing and ahing from the heat of the flashbulb on his fingers as he tried to replace it.

The radio we had wasn’t clunky. It was small and square and had only an am tuner and a volume control knob on the front. The wire came from the back, out of a hard piece of what I think was cardboard with holes for ventilation. It hid the tubes. When portable radios arrived, they were called transistor radios. Now there were two: radios and transistor radios. That way we never got confused. My first transistor was huge by today’s standards, and it still had only two knobs: one for volume and one for am radio. I used to lug mine everywhere. I thought it a marvel.

I got older and the world changed. Transistor radios got smaller, flash bulbs were blue and square with four bulbs in one, Polaroid pictures were born and the TV was in color. I thought those were the  wonder years. Who could ever have suspected today?

The sun just broke through the clouds. It rained a tiny bit last night. I could hear drops hitting the overhang outside the open window in my bedroom as I fell into dreamland.

The morning is a quiet one, as most Sundays are. My neighbors waved and wished me a Happy Easter as I drove by them on my way home from breakfast. They were coming from church and were dressed in their Easter clothes, in light blues and purples and pinks.

Today my friends and I are going out to dinner, and I’ll wear my Sunday best for the occasion. The restaurant is a lovely one right on the water. It isn’t often I go to restaurants without shelled peanuts on the floor. Today is an occasion.

The Red Sox open in a night game against the Yankees tonight, and I have been excited about this first game since the start of spring training. Baseball brings so much along with it. It makes me think of summer and hot dogs and the sounds of the crowd. I can already hear the crack of the bat and see the first ball sailing over the Green Monster. It won’t be long before the announcer says, “”Attention please, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway Park.”

I wish all of you the best Easter if you celebrate and a wonderful Sunday if you don’t. I’ll be heading to the deck after this. I want to feel drowsy from the warmth of the sun. The lounge chair is all ready.

The day is already absolutely beautiful with a deep blue, cloudless sky and a warm sun. Fern, the cat, and Gracie, the dog, are jockeying for spots in the sun by the front door. Their fur is hot to the touch.

I don’t have near the memories at Easter as I do for Christmas. Clothes never made a big impression on me except for that one dress I mentioned in an earlier posting. I do remember being little and wearing white gloves. They made me feel grown up and elegant. My first pair of nylons was worn on Easter and trying to attach them to a garter belt took a bit of manual dexterity and some body twisting. My first few attempts resulted in the elastic swinging back to whack me. Those little metal clips left marks. Another vivid Easter memory is the grass in my basket. It hid the jelly beans so you got a surprise later on and it stuck to everything: rugs, clothes and partially eaten candy. We used to have pick off the stuck spears of grass before we could eat the rest of the earless bunny.

Peeps have long been a favorite of mine, the yellow best of all. Just call me a traditionalist. I also like them stale and hard. My mother used to open the packages and leave the Peeps to the air. My jaws ached eating them. We used to get colored hard Easter candy eggs. They had a white middle, and I don’t think they had much taste. The jelly beans were big and all the colors tasted the same.  I think they were just basket fillers. I know they were the last things I ate after I rummaged through the grass and found a few. Sometimes I’d get a panorama egg, the ones made of icing with the scene inside. I used to save those. One year I remember a woven Chinese finger puzzle. It sticks in my memory because I couldn’t get my fingers freed no matter how much I pulled so I panicked. Come to find out pulling was why I was stuck. New crayons were always a basket hit as was the coloring book. I remember being artistic when I colored the eggs in my new book. I’d draw squiggly lines of different colors and then shade the eggs, a trick I learned from my mother, the best colorer I knew.

All morning long we’d carry our baskets from room to room and nibble on the candy until my mother made us stop to save room for dinner. It proved to me that adults just didn’t understand the priorities in life so we’d nibble anyway when she wasn’t looking. Turkey or ham couldn’t hold a candle to a chocolate bunny.