Easters Past and the Best Easter Gift of All

These days, Easter is little more than a blip on the social radar screen, but when I was a child, it was a major event.

I associated Easter, quite literally, with renewal and rebirth. After a long, cold winter in Wisconsin, I looked forward to Easter as the time of cattails and pussy willows in thawing ponds and streams, of the heavy scent of lilac blooms, of tulips in garden beds, of violets in the woods, of newborn birds and bunnies, of robins' eggs and blind baby moles. I remember wanting so badly for spring to burst free that I would even help it along by ramming ice in the culvert with a stick, attempting to dislodge it.

The spiritual message of resurrection and hope was physically played out in front of me at every turn. Just as nature was given another chance, so, too, would I be given a reprieve. This is what every blue sky and warm breeze and colorful blossom seemed to tell me. This would be the year when I would have someone to play with after school, someone to talk and laugh with; very soon, I, too, would have a friend.

Gone were all those long, lonely hours, days, weeks, and months of being holed up inside my parents' house. Gone was the hiding myself away in the basement or in my room. Even if a friend did not appear this year, at least I could leave the confines of this oppressive interior and feel sunshine on my face and explore the meadow and the woods, delighting in an outside world that was bursting with wonder and something that, if not quite joy, then certainly something very close to it.

I remember a lot of build-up to Easter. It was one of only two times during the year when I got new outfits--the other being the end of August, before the beginning of the school year. Selecting an Easter dress and shoes--or a new tie, shirt, and blazer for men and boys--was a big deal. An Easter dress was a happy dress in happy colors with ruffles or bows or other happy adornments.

Easter wasn't complete without lamb butter, sticks fashioned in the shape of reclining lambs; lamb cake, a dry, white-cake lamb with coconut frosting reclining on a bed of dyed-green coconut grass; and hot-cross buns, dinner roll-like sweet bread topped with white crosses of frosting. Add to this mix the soft pussy-willow buds brought inside and placed in a vase on the dining room table. The Easter-bonnet-and-Easter-egg tree, which I was told was a long-standing German tradition. And most magical of all, those eggs with the windows in them. I never owned one of these treasures, but could be enthralled for a long time, staring into their tiny, perfect, self-contained worlds.

Living as I now do in California, and as I have lived for many years, the wonder of winter turning into spring has greatly diminished. I live in a land of, if not perpetual good weather, at least weather that is no cause for complaint. And so it is far too easy to think of Easter as just another beautiful day.

Instead, this year, I will again consider its original intent. Next Thursday, a few short days after Easter, transplant surgeons at UCLA will determine if I will be given a place on the wait list for a kidney. What more appropriate Easter gift could I be given than this chance at life. As Jesus said, and so, too, may the surgeons, "I have come to give you life so that you may have it to the fullest."