Creeks and Romans

Easter was cold this year. The sun shone brightly on a clear blue sky with white clouds and green grass; if you stayed inside and looked out the window you would have declared it to be the most Easter-y of days. And then when you stepped outside into 28 F, the world would seem like a giant Easter bouquet kept in a florist's chilly refrigerator. It's a little hard to have a spring-time festival of rebirth and renewal when you feel like going back inside and hibernating. Yes, it's the resurrection of Christ that we're supposed to be celebrating, but our heathen blood is still warmed more by sunshine than philosophy.

And yet we still had the Easter egg hunt, bundled in jackets and hoods and gloves. The kids seem to be impervious to cold. The anthroposophists insist that children have underdeveloped temperature regulation systems, so they literally don't realize how cold they are . . . which is why parents are constantly chasing them around and insisting they put on a coat. I was not inclined to believe it, until now.

The boys are old enough now that the cuteness of toddlerhood is giving way to the loudness and brashness of true boyhood. The egg-hunt, and following chocolate-bunny binge, was still fun, and Aidan did an especially good job of helping his younger brother in the hunt. But the day as a whole had more "did-not-did-too" squabbles, especially while they are cooped up inside with their thin-blooded parents. The high point of the day, the time of greatest brotherly love and spring-time zeal, was when we finally went back outside to play in the creek. Sunlight on natural water is magical; sand, mud, rock, grass, all primative and beautiful. Even the hacking at mud with sticks, the futile attempts to build dams and bridges, is a part of the natural beauty. All our spirits were resurrected.