Last entry of Smarch, a month of unexpected good news and constant low level anxiety. I have 26 more days in the breach, including weekends. For some reason, it seems like an eternity.
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Good Easter this year. We woke up at 5:30, dressed in the dark and stumbled over quiet wet fields to the Sunrise Service bonfire at a local park. I had anticipated a world of hurt this morning, as we don't have a car to ease the travel early in the morning, but the weather was mild and the sun was already up by the time we left the house. The turnout was amazing; much better than last year's cold dark wet service. Although that was special too...there's something amazing about being out at such a time of day with a bunch of happy people and a big hot fire. And freshly cooked fish & bread, of course.
If we ever come back to Nova Gothic, I think I'm going to scare up a bottle of kosher wine for the next sunrise service. Might as well go all the way.
The breakfast this year was an experiment in Greek cooking: an egg & sausage casserole and lamb soup. I quite liked the soup and the bread wreath centrepiece (you know, the shiny braided bread with dyed eggs nested in it? That kind of bread wreath.) The casserole I could take or leave; there were a few too many peppers in it to please my delicate palate. But I got more than enough to eat that morning, more than enough to make me absolutely blissful for reasons I couldn't identify. Maybe it was the fellowship. Dunno.
The regular service was marked by several varieties of inter-choir squabbling, and my only comment is that although I resented it at the time, they were right to tell me to leave my big straw hat behind in the choir room. I was enjoying the attention far too much, although I wore head-to-toe purple (including the black and purple tights) and so gathered a great deal of attention anyway.
Several young women decked a wood-and-chickenwire cross with an enormous amount of daffodils, and it was one of the most beautiful semi-pagan things I've ever seen. Later I felt a bit sad that I'll never get to deck out a cross in flowers - as a married woman, the symbolism is all wrong - but I guess since I'm happily married I'll just have to suck it up.
When we got home, we shared some soup (the ordinary tinned variety) and some bread left-over from the sunrise service. Then I took a 2 1/2 hour nap. Yeah, nothing like celebrating the greatest feast day of your religion with a prolonged bout of unconsciousness. I need to rest up before tomorrow, when I start planning for the week. I've been having a three-day vacation from thinking about field experience, although it's been easier to declare the vacation than live it; I'm so freaked out that it keeps creeping into my mind when I least expect it. The problem with a four-day break is that everything seems so much scarier when you anticipate it instead of live it.
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4 years ago today: even Cake & Sodomy Weekend was not without its' stresses.
