April 5 – “Re-building”

With five of our grandkids over Friday (and they brought their parents with them), we had quite the stimulating time.  Sure did miss the other three little guys and their Mom and Dad, though.  Chris made a roast and a bucketful of rice, so we started out with lunch.  That was followed by our traditional family attack on the Easter eggs.  Now, I said “on” the eggs, not “with” the eggs, although there was some residue to clean up by the time everyone walked away.  This was the time for everyone to decorate the 36 or so eggs Chris boiled first thing in the morning.  All the kids (even little Noa in her high chair perch) gathered around the big table that was teeming with warm eggs, a hodge-podge of coffee cups from which emanated that distinctive smell of vinegar mixed with old-fashioned dissolvable dye tablets, and an individual place mat of a folded-over newspaper base (to lessen the likelihood of egg breakage) and a clean paper towel on top. We go all-in on the old-school approach to Easter around here. 

Nana and her ever-present camera stood watch over the whole affair, like a hen hovering over her brood.  After all, somewhere amongst the array of eggs will be the ones she lays claim to.  And those selections will take their place of honor among the now-rebuilding collection of hard-boiled eggs that, left untouched and unbroken, will slowly rot away on the inside until a perfectly empty and extremely fragile heirloom remains.  I say rebuilding because for many of the almost 40 years that we have been married Chris has saved one or two of the eggs from our Decoration Day festivities.  Any time we moved she would hold that particular bowl of eggs in her lap, not trusting it with a mover.   Through the years there have been “incidents” involving broken eggs from the “The Bowl,” but generally speaking she has been jealous in her protection.  Sadly, however, many of this particular collection were ripped from their tranquility and smashed into nothingness by the ravages of Hurricane Ike.  Hence … re-building. 

And she now has two more candidates for inclusion.  One I did with “Easter 2015” written in crayon before the dyeing process.  And the other was yet another tradition.  Everyone in the room used a crayon to sign an egg (yes, even Noa) before dunking it in yellow dye.  Hope that one makes it through the preliminary stages of inspection unbroken so it can make its way into the Bowl of Honor. 

1 Corinthians 12:22-23 says, “On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.”

Father, thank you for giving me a family that doesn’t mind getting together for things like Easter egg dyeing and Christmas tree decorating.  After all, it’s about the getting together more than about what we do.  Amen.