Ramblings at Easter

Easter weekend. Both WordPerfect (used and loved since 1989) and Word (not so much) have both disappeared from my new computer and appear to be holding me ransom. Four days holiday, so I doubt Pat, my computer guru, will be able to come until Tuesday. Interesting reaction: determined to be calm, that’s hard where computers are concerned but hey, first world problem. On Friday I was lost without my computer stool to sink into - went for a drive, watched the Blue Jays lose, and felt useless. What happened to pencil and paper? Mmm. ‘They’ have kidnapped three half-finished articles that I cannot reach but action is a better solution than lolling about, feeling sorry for myself. Therefore, these ramblings.

At Easter, I think of Jamaica, when my kids were really small, when Easter eggs could not be found in the shops. Maybe it was the year that the transfer between the British pound and the Jamaican dollar scooped British products from store shelves that were not yet prepared for locally made products. Was that the same time we lined up at 4 a.m. for $5 worth of gas? (Hope that wasn’t training for now - but if so, I’m ready.) So I decided to make chocolate eggs. I filled neatly broken and cleaned egg shells with melted chocolate. Once they hardened, I ‘glued’ the halves together with more chocolate, tying colourful bows around them. Full egg boxes were a big surprise from the Easter bunny. I also made hot cross buns and my grandmother’s simnel cake. Those were the days One year in Sao Paulo I sewed Easter outfits for the kids; they look at the photo now and say ‘How could you have done that to us!!’ - especially my son, resplendent in his little blue leisure suit.

And then I remember Easter egg hunts of old with dear friends met in unusual circumstances and loved as family for a short time. The Farrens had wonderful Easter egg hunts in Santo Domingo. Many children scrambled through their huge garden while we parents relaxed under the trees with Cuba Libres, negotiating arguments on the battlefield. Not too many - there were enough eggs for an army. Their garden was also host to the scariest of Hallowe’en parties, webs and ghosts in every tree.

We had wonderful friends everywhere we lived, but we were always saying goodbye. Imagine: you move to a country not knowing anyone, meet ex-pats, end up with a few really close friends, then someone is transferred out to another posting - either you, or your friends. Eventually you. And you start all over again. International corporate life was like that then; military families know it well.

When we moved to the Dominican Republic, I was 25, pregnant for the first time, and had virtually no heads-up as to what to expect. I had to look up the country (in the encyclopedia!) to see where it was. They’d just had a revolution - trouble was still reverberating. I thought we’d be the only foreigners in town. But I was excited and had little trepidation of what lay ahead. Strange for fearful, protected, unexperienced me. And so it started. After only nine months, we were the ones given a despedida - a farewell party. I was desolate at losing the couple of friends I had made. There were too many despedidas in many countries after that. Many tears. Either losing friends who had become family or being the ones who had to fly away. Usually at short notice. One really close family left overnight; their house was empty the next day.

We kept in touch. Some only for a while before they vanished into the fog of memory, building new lives. That was important too. Some visited us in our ‘new’ countries, some we visited. I remember an amazing road trip my daughter and I took to Florida and back, on a shoestring, but staying with old friends on stops all the way; often seeing special friends in Thunder Bay on my drive back from my daughter’s in Calgary; visiting a friend in the Bronx, many in England. In fact, two summers ago I had a champagne breakfast in Heathrow Airport with dear friends from Venezuela days, 1971. We picked up where we left off. I love to see their ‘Likes’ on Facebook. We were family - the Farrens, the Cosletts, the Shraders, Annette, the Skelletts, Ellen - found in different countries. Drawn together by similar energies, how lucky we all were.

Only now, do I realize the seesaw it must have been: constantly saying good bye, grief always hovering, anxiety about starting again, especially for the children’s sake, two or three years of intimacy ended at the stroke of a manager’s pen. I’ve been back in Canada for 44 years, almost half my life, yet those years remain vivid. They’ve almost become folklore.

At a stretch, the swing of our lives was kind of like Easter. An encapsulated cycle of grief: Friday farewells after gathering in the garden; pausing in quiet adjustment on Saturday, discovery and joy on Sunday and moving on with life on Monday. Maybe that’s why the delight of the garden Easter Egg hunt came to me - joyful yet poignant, knowing the goodbyes had yet to come. Anticipating the grief but honouring its place in the cycle by celebrating the moment, like the last supper with a feast of chocolate eggs.