Ripping at the seams

This is the beginning of another holiday season. While some people favor Christmas, I prefer the Easter season.

As a child in America, Easter can be horrifying. I cannot tell you how many times I screamed at the television. " why are they being so mean! Why hurt Jesus?" I cried and cried, shoving my face with peeps marshmallow candies. My mother insisted until the day she died that we went to church but I think that was what she WANTED to remember.

As a parent, I enjoy the festive completion of children knocking each other over for plastic Easter eggs. I could swear one year we must have attended five hunts. I was crushing eggs as they were scattered from end to end in our tiny house. One of my fondest memories as a child was finding the golden egg. I won a Fisher Price little people A frame doll house. It was one of the greatest of miniature accomplishments.

Today I sorted through old report cards, yearbooks, and pictures. How many happy years as a family did we have left after this picture was taken? Were my parents happy here? I see us in our finest clothes but the real question: Was the fabric of their relationship ripping at the seams?


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