Imperfectly Easter

The thing is, happiness is never perfect.

The tofu cheesecake you baked for dessert isn’t flawless (Oy, not flawless is an understatement! There was a huge crack in it, and the lemon juice had allergen-producing preservatives in it, so it was a last-minute orange cheesecake instead of lemon one, and then there was …The Crack. Grand Canyon sized. Was going to make a topping – thought briefly of Devonshire Cream. Thought about it in terms of calories. Said, “Forget about it.”). The house you’ve dug out from under your winter slobitude and ten days of sickness, despite all the work, isn’t spotless (Oops. Didn’t get finished with the laundry, had to stash it in the guest room to dry… and then forgot to close the door).

And the eggs — oh, the eggs! — are… a creamy …tan. They’re the same as all of the chicken eggs you’ve seen in the country thus far, only you’ve forgotten that, somewhat inconveniently. And of course, by the time you think of it, all the duck and goose eggs in their perfect whiteness are long gone. You smack yourself in the forehead. Repeatedly.

It’s Easter. And it isn’t perfect.

And when you finish sniffling that you’ve screwed it all up again, you realize that it doesn’t really matter.

The company is more important than the cleaning.

The camaraderie is more important than the cheesecake.

And the whole point of Easter, anyway, is that nothing on earth can weigh down, hold back, tie up, or otherwise discommode the joy of life. By this, we don’t mean happiness, which is something that seems to be rather conditional and temporary (Was quite sure I could not be happy without white eggs!), but actual joy — which is rooted in the simple contentment of being where you are meant to be — in this case, around beautiful things with lovely people.

Today there were daffodils — thousands of them — growing spontaneously on the banks of the River Kelvin. No one planted them, they just showed up — which was wonderfully mood-lifting. Today we rolled our creamy-brown-painted eggs down the hill, and cheered them on (and frightened some poor Asian students) as they gathered momentum in a way no chicken could have imagined.

It snowed a bit today, which certainly isn’t what’s supposed to happen at Easter. We were outside in thin jackets, freezing — and laughing our fool heads off.

And everything was as it should be.

Joy to you, too.

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