The sky is ablaze with sun. It is glorious today, and I’m heading outside after this. I’m going to uncover the deck furniture. I would love a band and some music for the unveiling.

I ran into a former student the other day who had graduated about twenty years ago. We hugged and chatted. She told me I hadn’t changed a bit. All I could think of was I must have looked much older when I was younger.

We never had school on Good Friday. It was considered a sacred day so we got to stay home. I really never cared all that much about the sacred part. I was just a kid and cared more about having the day off. We never had an Easter countdown like we did for Christmas so being giddy and impatient was never part of the weekend. My friends and I would ride bikes and play around the neighborhood like it was any other day. Easter Saturday was just about the same as every other Saturday. We’d have hot dogs, beans and brown bread for dinner, watch a little TV then take our baths. My sisters would cry when my mother combed the snarls out of their wet hair, and my brother and I would turn up the TV so we didn’t have to listen. It’s not that we found the sound heart-wrenching. It was annoying, just as my little sisters were.

My mother was always a bit busier that Saturday. She’d take off tags and iron any wrinkles in our new clothes then set them out, ready for the morning. After we were in bed, she’d go to her hiding place and bring out the baskets and the stuff to put inside then put them together. We never heard her. Falling to sleep the night before Easter was never a big deal.

The war with the squirrels has taken a new turn. I am feeding them, but there is, of course, a catch. The feeder has three arms like the sails of a windmill, and the corn is attached to the end of each arm. The squirrels become the Flying Sciuridaes (which is the family squirrel. I looked it up). I watched a squirrel spinning this morning. I couldn’t stop laughing at the beastie’s antics. He was, of course, as all squirrels are, quite persistent. He finally decided to eat upside down.

The day is cloudy again. They keep promising sun, but that hasn’t happened yet. At least it’s dry. My yard is strewn with limbs which have fallen this winter. Scrub pine branches are delicate things.

My sister is planning an Easter egg hunt for her grandson. She’ll be hiding colorful plastic eggs filled with small toys and candy in her backyard. It reminds me of one special Easter egg hunt when I was kid. It was for the whole neighborhood and was in the field behind our houses, the same field where we hunted grasshoppers and fireflies all summer. The old tree with the fallen limb was the furthest we needed to hunt. We all grabbed our pails or baskets and ran as fast as we could. We figured fleet of foot was the deciding advantage. Each find was announced by a kid holding up an egg and yelling, “I got one.” That spurred the rest of us. I filled my basket. One of the eggs I’d found was gold, and it turned out to be the grand egg, the prize egg. I don’t remember what I won. I just remember that special egg.

I remember one other hunt. It was inside the house. In those days we hunted hard boiled eggs we’d colored on Saturday. My parents would hide the eggs early in the morning and we’d hunt right after breakfast. One year my parents must have lost count. It took a while to find the source of the smell.