Eastergate
Two Easters ago, Christopher and I woke before dawn with flashlights shining into our bedroom window. I padded to the kitchen where the stove read 4:46. I followed a trail of basket grass that led to the side door, which swung open to the night.
I felt a tug at the bottom of my ratty tee-shirt and saw Clyde, looking up at me with a grin smeared in jelly bean juice: “They outside.”
I ran out to scold Max and Augie who were stalking the bushes, all the colorful plastic eggs cracked open, their contents consumed. Christopher had spent an hour in the dark the night before stuffing eggs into daffodil tufts and bush branches. Gone were my IG-inspired fantasies of a charming family morning—Christopher and me, sitting on the stone wall, drinking coffee, watching the boys in matching PJs; me, in my Doen nightgown. All that quaintness vaporized in this pre-dawn rebellion. Never mind that we’d already abandoned our costumes, or failed to hand-paint the eggs. “You ruined Easter!” I accused.
Four hours and six blood sugar spikes later, we wrangled the boys into their best clothes and crammed them into a church pew. The service was followed by another candy hunt. By eleven a.m. I felt exhausted and despairing. “How have we raised such disrespectful kids?” Christopher pulled a crushed Cadbury wrapper from behind a cushion and shrugged—annoyed, but not existentially.
Mythical creatures
When I was small, Santa used to visit our house before Christmas. He’d lumber down the stairs in a coat just like my father’s—a terracotta fireman’s jacket with big, metal buckles. Santa had Pappy’s tobacco-coffee breath and a beard that fell in gobs onto his chest and shoes. When, at age four, I found a garbage bag in the playroom filled with the doll I’d hoped for (?!), Pappy looked at me with a tortured expression, sat me down and said: “I’m sorry, I cannot lie to you. There is no Santa.” Suddenly the scary guy with the Barbasol beard made sense. I felt sad, but relieved.
Still, I yearned for a dad who’d place me on the lap of another man at the mall and say, yes, this stranger will fulfill your most private dream. Just tell him, honey.
Santa and the Easter Bunny played critical roles in my fantasy of motherhood: maybe in my sweet Doen nightgown, I could be the perfect myth and memory maker. My holiday tablescapes and egg hunts would be so well-executed I’d stun the boys into reverence and good manners. I didn’t see it as a harbinger that the boys insisted on wearing mismatched superhero PJs to bed, or that I’d already returned the Doen sleepwear, which rode up in the night, suffocating me.
⚡️⚡️
Easter mornings, I play Bob Dylan. He was a stronger mythological force in my youth than Santa or the bunny. But that only makes sense now, years after Pappy died.
Pappy met ‘Bobby’ once, at the Kennedy Center Honors. He marched up to his hero—whose nickname he assumed—grabbed the man’s small hand, looked him hard in the eye and said: “Bobby, I give you up every Lent.” Pappy didn’t wait for a response. He just walked away.
As a kid, I loved Lent for this very reason. Because for the other three-hundred and twenty-five days of the year, we had to listen to Blood on the Tracks and Infidels and Desire (Bobby’s ballads were the WURST). The door wells of our Subaru Dumb Luck clattered with empty cassette cases. We were late for school because tapes had to be located in the kitchen, or the living room. Pappy would unroll his window in all weather, throw his head back and howl along: Don’t fall apart on meeeee toniiiiiight I just don’t think that I could handle iiiiiiit.
Other than his belief in the afterlife, Pappy’s greatest gift to me was his love of Bob Dylan. I know my father’s spirit lives; and close. All the hours he made us sit in the car, listening to Bobby belt poems means there’s a soundtrack to my childhood. Mine and my sister, Lily’s. Anytime I put on New Morning, Pappy’s close.
Easter Monday I called Lily to complain about my irreverent kids and to marvel at the idea I’d developed of the prim mommy who paints eggs dressed like a prairie princess. I was starting to feel the friction of a set up, a con, a dupe. Lily asked if I’d seen the 2005 documentary No Direction Home, which chronicles Bobby’s transition from American folk hero to electric guitarist.
I told her I had not.
She told me I should, especially the last scene.
The film centers around a series of concerts in England, 1966, where contemptuous crowds come to see Bobby play. They applaud the first, acoustic set, then boo when the wires come out. They don’t want their folk hero turning into a rock star. One fan shouts: “JUDAS!” Finally, baby-faced Bobby looks out at the lights and the un-seeable faces and shouts: “I don’t believe you…You’re a LIAR!” Then he turns to the band and says: “Play it fucking loud!”
“I don’t believe you.” Wait… could it be that simple?
Little traps
After Eastergate, I took a long look at how I’d set us all up for failure: is it reasonable to ramp up the kids on Easter Eve until they vibrate in their beds, then expect them to sleep until a reasonable hour? They’re supposed to believe the chocolate was gifted by a giant rabbit, but show gratitude to ME, and also… Jesus. Because just as the sugar high wanes, they’ve got to sit still in a tight pew, under the heat of a hundred strangers’ bodies and bad breath, reverent for the man who came back from the dead.
Oh and also: we eat his body and drink his blood. This is normal, kiddies, alright! Just believe me. If you can’t, then at least be QUIET.
There’s a point at which the myth ceases to be a tale and becomes a lie instead. The bunny, Doen-Mommy. Transubstantiation (IMHO). The myths use symbols that point to love and togetherness, but we can get so obsessed with signaling we forget the love and togetherness. We lose the real thing, pursuing the fake thing. Pappy was onto it.
Pappy imprinted me with two absolute truths, which are my faith: 1) God’s inside—everybody, everywhere has direct access. 2) Love is all there is. You live it if you’re lucky and you die into it, no question. Also: Day of the Locusts is the best song ever written and it’s your parental duty to indoctrinate your children with Bob Dylan while they’re trapped in the car.
These are the messy years. The loud years. The years of dishes in the sink and ratty pajamas. I’ve got to stop trying to be better than I am. Nobody cares about the tablescape, and honestly is that a real word?
And lest I get duped again by the momfluencers in peasant clothing, dipping eggs into Ball jars and drying them without fingerprints on the side (HOW THOUGH) I can always watch that clip of Bobby, lighting up those prissy Brits with Like a Rolling Stone. I DON’T BELIEVE YOU.
Let ‘em raid
Next Sunday, the boys can hunt in the dark. I’m going to squeeze my ratty shirt onto their mismatched PJs until they wriggle out of my grip. If we make it to church, our hair will not be brushed. Jesus, I am certain, will not judge. I’ll leave the dishes and we’ll sit on the floor and eat jelly beans instead. These are the years for imprinting: love is all there is.
I also plan to remind them, with just a touch of macabre delight—because really, doesn’t the idea of a body rising from the dead inspire it?— “Don’t forget to sing Day of the Locusts at my funeral.”
“The myths use symbols that point to love and togetherness, but we can get so obsessed with signaling we forget the love and togetherness.” Sublime, dear one
And I’ll be over here jamming out to Fats Domino (hey pop!) and eating candy! We’re all one and the same…it’s too easy to forget that.
And I’m thinking of the non-Catholic teacher at my very Catholic high school who said “You don’t get to tell anyone their beliefs are weird. You believe you are eating and drinking the body and blood of a man.”
“These are the years for imprinting: love is all there is.”❤️🔥