I’ve written before how death and divorce can make holidays especially piercing, seeing everyone with their loved ones when so many of mine are now gone. This is the first Easter in 6 years that didn’t feel like I was being stabbed with 1,000 tiny pins all day long. This Easter feels more like struggling through a muddy swamp.
I wondered why the feelings changed.
Was it time? People love to say, “time heals all wounds,” but I have not found that to be true for me.
In my experience, some wounds never heal.
I miss my beloveds all day every day. The pain remains, as big and all-consuming as ever, but the more it tries to pull me down, to destroy me, the more ferociously I create: writing, dancing, filming, creating…
I have learned to live with loss and grief, it is a part of who I am, and though I wish this part wasn’t true, it is true: grief is also an integral part of my children, and I know they feel the loss a little extra on holidays too.
I wanted to make this holiday magical for them, but I was stumped on how to do this. I’m rarely at a loss for ways to celebrate any tiny thing from the appearance of a ladybug to the bloom of the first lily, but this year, with me feeling like I was swimming through mud, what could I do to enchant them?
In the past, I usually booked an Easter brunch. We’d get into our fancy clothes and head into the city, and I’d have visions of swan boats floating through lush green weeping willows, past charming bridges and fields of flowers, but the park in April was always the opposite of this vision, with its bare twig trees and whipping wind so cold it turned our eyes red and immediately chapped our faces. I could say these Easter walks never turned out well, but if I’m being completely honest, they were miserable. T.S. Eliot lived in Cambridge when he wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” He wasn’t kidding. Ask anyone who lives in New England.
So, last night I asked the kids if they wanted to dye easter eggs? No.
Play charades? No.
Play Agatha Christie Bingo? Double No, although Henry DID offer to invite my friends over when I’m older for rousing game of Agatha Christie Bingo and he would call out the numbers for us. Watch my favorite spring movie, Easter Parade? NO!
Annabelle: That movie is 4 hours long! Plus it makes no sense Judy Garland would fall in love with Fred Astaire when he’s a 100 years old and she’s like 20!
ME: I agree, except if you ignore that part, the costumes, colors, dancing, and music make the world seem so soft and romantic! Look at that tap dancing! The cut of that jacket! The floating pink feathers! The way the costumes match the sets, and the gloves, purses, and flawless lipstick!
SWOON!
I took the kids for their first viewing of Easter Parade on the big screen at the Prytania Theater in New Orleans when they were ages 3 and 1. I assumed they would last a half hour max, so we sat near the aisle so we could leave early without disturbing anyone, but shocker, they lasted the entire movie! All 5,000 hours! I was thrilled I finally had classic movie companions, except now they are teenagers they are no longer enthralled by my technicolor fantasy world.
So on Easter Eve, after a great deal of discussion, we finally agreed to watch Poker Face, a classic-style murder mystery with a unique twist: the main character is the wise-cracking Charlie, played by Natasha Lyonne, a woman living on the run and solving murders wherever she goes. She has a voice like a battered old suitcase being dragged off the top of a whiskey barrel, hair like the nest of a pelican, and the show opens with her sitting in a lawn chair by her trailer drinking beer out of a can.
It’s the opposite of Easter Parade.
No one is falling in love or floating about a stage in swooning technicolor with an orchestra playing. Instead, Charlie is running from the mob. She drives an old beater car until she runs out of gas, then she finds cash work so she can hit the road again. Her odd jobs land her in places with seedy people who are committing murders that she ends up solving to the tunes of Tom Waits and Bob Dylan.
Why does she solve all these murders? Because she has an unshakeable superpower that she can tell when people are lying, even when she doesn’t want to know. And maybe that’s the thing my kids need to learn right now—daily life is a plunge into a rich world full of wild characters and unpredictable circumstances and the thing that gets you through? Honesty.
I want them to learn to be fearless and cultivate their own unshakeable superpowers so they can live in the richest world of all: the truth, and not just any truth, but the gorgeous soul-shining truth found in storytelling and creating art.
We can’t bring my Dad back, but we can keep up the tradition of his witty observations and endless reserve of corny jokes, going out of our way to show up for people, to be generous and make people laugh;
We can’t bring my Mom back, but we can wear flowers in our hair like she loved to do, and we can open doors for elderly women at the grocery store and help them carry their bags to their cars;
We can’t bring our family of 4 back together after the brutal divorce, but we can create something more stable, safe, and magical with just the three of us;
And we can’t bring Kim back, but we can keep her memory alive through sumptuous storytelling, hanging suncatchers from our trees, dancing barefoot under the moonlight, and music. Last week, Annabelle told me that she sometimes listens to the song “Malibu” on repeat, a song that reminds us all of Kim because on our last visit with her in California, we all drove to Malibu and she blasted that song throughout the canyon, grabbing my hand as the ocean came into view. She told the kids “Malibu” made her think of us because we often talked about moving there together once the kids were grown.
I put on Easter Parade this morning for a dash of glamour before I drove Annabelle to the bus station for her un-glamorous ride back to NYC. We had a heartfelt talk on the way, like someone dropped a sapphire into my hand, and I hugged her tightly before she ran across the street with her yellow backpack, dragging her wheeled suitcase. Henry called me on the way home, yelling because he had seen a large bug. I told him to remain calm–when the weather changes, bugs usually start appearing here and there.
The earth is waking up, and with the flowers come the bugs.
With powerful love comes powerful loss, and sometimes the pain seems too much, but I really wouldn’t trade one beautiful moment for less pain.
We are just like the waves that flow back and forth
Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning and you’re there to save me
And I wanna thank you with all of my heart
It’s a brand new start
A dream come true. Malibu.
(Miley Cyrus)
