Easter Sunday 2020

For the first time ever in the history of the Burk Motel, we hold an Easter egg hunt. You would think with five children passing through here over 23 years we would have had one–or many, but I realize as I watch them that we are usually too busy at church to pull it off. Also new this year–a scavenger hunt with clues to a dozen or so places on our own property concluding with their Easter baskets. Really? Like, what are they — five again? Has the bunny gone ’round the bend?

The nostalgia is flowing heavily for me these days, not because of sentimentality or fear, but because they are doing things they did as younger children. Things they haven’t done in a long time. Seriously, when was the last time one of our children hung out in the garage, painting and projecting? Did they even know we have a garage? When was the last time one of them spent time in the back yard? The monuments of their youth are all gone–the swings, the sandbox, playhouse, tree fort and trampoline–gone from “magic world of childhood” to “ignored” to “eyesore” in what felt like one long afternoon. But in this time of quarantine, the ancient haunts come alive again. They sling hammocks, spread towels to sun and read on, garden, and in Will’s case, dig. More on that later. Point I’m making: For the modern, stressed and overscheduled species on our premises, the narrowing was all but complete. Cultural myopia. House had shrunk to the square footage of bedroom and kitchen. Now, I find we are living in a mansion with room upon room, acres of lawn, expansive garden and a gentle wood. And in that wood, this Easter day, fifty colored eggs.

I can’t believe I got a college kid–even more so, her serious sister–running around in the woods hunting for candy. They start with the baskets on their heads, shoving each other and arguing who will win. Win? We are stuck in a house for an interminable time stripped of every fun and wonderful life-marker, with dwindling resources and the threat of disease and you speak of “win”??! Now they are running. Be still: They are calling out and laughing. I can’t believe the sun is shining. It could pour rain, threaten tornadoes and a tree limb could come down on our shed. Oh sorry, that’s tomorrow. But I am still worried about Mommy’s “Easter party”–that it will fall on sullen moods and broken hearts. Many a day it appears these people don’t even like each other. That one will have more fun than another, that the little will be left out, the big will deem it “stupid,”  that the middle will leak away. But lo, they are behaving as one does at an Easter egg hunt (minus the prim dresses and darling bonnets.) Clearly my worry how this would go was unfounded. In a flash of pure gold they are all nine and they are all mine… we manage to find all fifty. Plus a little innocence and joy even I had missed. Kids sort their spoils, compare what they got in the sun-warm grass. Did you know sour patch makes jelly beans now. Who knew?

Then it is time for the first-ever Burk Motel Easter scavenger hunt. Three teams (aka every man for himself) while Bill and I settle on the patio to watch the fun. Will they figure out the clues? Will they think it’s dumb to be doing this at home? Will they resist and pout, unwilling to partake of a game for little kids? Will they finish at the same time or will a little healthy competition only ramp up the sore emotions and on-edge going on around here? Will they wish for friends, cousins, random neighborhood children–anyone to make this more fun? Really, mom? Teams of one? What the heck is that? I hand out my cheery color-coded first clue card and they’re off.

What will it be — Door one, two or three?
Just between you and me,
If you really want to win it,
I’d go to the one with bikes in it.

To be honest. When I wrote the clues, I thought of places that are significant today: the bike shed, for the five high speed transports inside it. A mom is nothing if she ain’t inspirational. Subtle like a 30-ton steam locomotive bearing down on you. Think, people! A little air in the tires and probably a seat adjustment after all these years, and you could be miles from here. Miles. Swing wide those shed doors and let’s roll out those freedom machines. We have lifted the ban on Georgetown Road during the time of quarantine, reasoning that the traffic that made riding this main road so dangerous is all but dried up.

Everyone knows how this spot glows,
For it is plain to see
How high the flames go,
when you throw in a plasma TV.

Okay, a safety warning in that one, but also a suggestion–an invitation to family time. I see that as my role in all this, other than bathing the home in Clorox wipes and venturing out to a grocery every 14 days. What luxury I have, compared with those on the true front lines. I am not oblivious. What luxury, to be at home and able to spin the disaster into moments of gold. Will would wee himself if we all showed up there one night, team of five, gathered around the fire pit. He, feeding a professionally-built boy scout blaze, taking those pecking, deriding comments from dumhead sisters who don’t know near the hours he has spent here, his personal inferno. We would sit on newly spray painted lawn chairs (thank you, Ellie) beneath the newly restored fairy string lights (thank you, Daddy). Will was insisting the tree guys took out those three or four bulbs, but they had the scent of BB gun all over them. And I have a bag of marshmallows hidden away like a an unspent promise.

What does it mean to say “Go Green”
When it’s not quite as it seems;
When the fossil fuels are streamin’
And you hold a set of keys??!

Okay there’s a sore spot, little green car permanently parked and coated in pollen. Never has it been so still. Now that we’ve had to open different worlds, where one has no use of a car. I know when they come opening and slamming car doors they are on the 9th clue, close to the end.  The “treasure” will be their Easter basket, placed on the kitchen table after they went busting outside. Goes (almost) without saying what the true treasure is, for here is my heart…

Go to the last place you thought you’d be …. Not at work school or shops…but stuck here with me….at that time of life when all our sights were far…

Instead, home is where you are.

I’ve told you about the closet. Girl has stripped and purged her room like a smooth stone. Only a slip of her remains. Open a desk drawer, study her book shelf. Couple of books, a few mementos and a nervous hermit crab probably thinking he’s next. When it passed the line from simplicity to sterile, this room, I worried. Girl has no place to retreat to. Then came the closet, where she seemed to want to retreat to the most insular, isolated, room-for-one world she could find–and if she couldn’t find one she’d make one. Without being too melodramatic here (Sophie would not like that) when it became a prayer closet she opened a door to the whole world. And no surprise, she has become more present, more real to us, like one of those movies where the person comes back into being, by some cinematographic trick–etched in, limb by limb. Like a silver lining–storm coming on, cloud hovering over, carrying with it (if you look) strange blessings. You have to look just right to see them. Have to be open to how exactly they are a blessing at all. Have to hold them in your hand, turning and studying their unlikely possibility…. All is gone, cancelled, killed, over and done–but look up, look up and see…

I am weary from grieving a stillborn future, weary from worry and sadness, so the luxury of slipping into a mother’s pure ol’ fashioned nostalgia on this Easter weekend–well, it is a welcome change. I know this feeling. It does not end in a sadness too sharp to bear but in a vision of your person blossoming into their person and the pride of thinking it the most beautiful person in all the world.

Easter Sunday afternoon–Will is seated at the kitchen table, constructing a robotics catapult he received in his basket, Sophie across from him nibbling on the Easter food I am putting away, Ellie is dinking on her phone here, in the same room. My expansive kitchen. Bill has gone up to nap so we’ve pulled closed the pocket doors making the room even more, because of its boundaries, a warm little cocoon. Pretty odd, for a pass-through room of a family always on the move. Not usually here, and certainly not together. “This is nice,” says Will not looking up, and I think he is talking about his kit. I look over at him, busy building, the other two, busy being, and am given that panoramic view of my life like you sometimes get. Are given. Flash of silver, then of gold.

He is not talking about the kit.