My family isn’t very big on special occasions. I know my mom could take or leave the entire month of December. She’s told me she doesn’t mind at all celebrating the Holidays in October or February when travel isn’t such a hassle.
We tell each other that our idea of an awesome New Year’s celebration is to crawl into bed and ask someone to wake us up when it’s over. We chuckle, but we know we’re not kidding.
I bet you that if you asked my father to list his offspring and their corresponding birthdays he wouldn’t be able to answer (he might get lucky and remember all our names, but definitely not the dates we came into the world.)
This is why I’m so grateful to the people in our lives who don't listen when we assure them important dates don't matter.
My husband looks the other way when I don’t remember our anniversary and has gotten into the habit of booking a special trip on that date, where we take stock of our lives from somewhere far away enough to provide perspective.
Easter will forever belong to Tomas, my mother’s husband. We used to wake up every Easter Sunday (we’re not Catholic) and run out to the garden to find dozens of eggs. They weren’t chocolate (my brother was severely allergic to it). They were plastic, and I would unwrap and open them to find treasures inside: multicolored candy, sure, but other things too. Jewelry and miniature furniture, secret notes and toys.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized he had to go look for things small enough to fit into the eggs, individually wrap them, get up early to hide them, and then put them away for the following year.
I am grateful to Tomas for putting up with our un-sentimental, overly pragmatic ways and for making my life a pastel colored place. You know, the kind where you expect to find nestled in the grass a baby blue egg with a unicorn inside.
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