"Today God gives milk/and I have the pail:" some words on Easter

On Good Fridays when I was a little girl, we came home from school, ate a hasty dinner, and put on our dressy clothes to go to church, all of which was bad. The church was too quiet and scary dark, and that was bad too. The songs we sang were slow and bad. The preacher used his baddest voice and told us everyone of those bad things those bad men did to Jesus because we we're all so bad, even if we don't always seem that way. It made me sad. We filed up to the front of the church for Communion. This is body of Christ, broken for you and for many for the forgiveness of sin. When I was very, very small I knelt beside my parents and big sisters with my lips pressed tight together while they received the Elements and I watched with big eyes. This is the blood of Christ, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus' blood came in little clear plastic cups and smelled like grape juice, and there was a funny, bad feeling along my ribs and all up the back of my neck. On the car ride home, I always asked what made Good Friday good, and my mother's answers never satisfied. Some bad men were mean to Jesus and he died and now grownups ate and drank him up like monsters, and there was not one good thing about all that.

And then, three days later, it was Easter. My sisters and I ran across the dew-wet ground in bare feet and nightgowns, looking for the eggs my parents had hidden while we lay in our narrow pink beds. The grass was cold and sent small, thrilling aches up my legs. Then I put on new white shoes and new white socks stood up on my tippy toes to sing in my loudest voice up from the grave he arose/with a mighty triumph o'er his foes at church. I was so happy that Jesus wasn't dead anymore, that he was out and about on a pretty spring morning and walking through walls and cooking breakfast for his friends who were all so happy to see him once they figured out who he was, and I was happy that I was wearing a blue dress with a wide, lace collar. I was happy because I knew the bad parts were still there but I knew they were somehow made okay on Easter morning.

This year on Easter Sunday, my friend Melissa said a friendly "how are you?" I told her I was great--and I told her everything I've written here in some frenetic burst. Easter, I said, is my favorite holiday because it's the only one that really makes me feel that sort of happy, childlike way the people who make Hallmark cards say we're all supposed to feel periodically. Easter, I said, is the thing that I believe in. She smiled and I smiled, and we sat down and opened up our hymnals to sing the first song of the morning.