{"id":192,"date":"2010-04-04T13:09:02","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T13:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/2010\/04\/04\/easter\/"},"modified":"2010-04-04T13:09:02","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T13:09:02","slug":"easter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/easter\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/span>It is still dark, misty-foggy, the velvet sky reminiscent of so many other Florida dawns. Sunrise comes late on the west coast, the day revealing itself slowly.\u00a0 Beyond the wide-open sliding doors: the dull tide of distant traffic, the sibilant chirrups of birds waking.\u00a0 For an hour I\u2019ve been lying in bed, listening to\u00a0 morning sounds, trying to conjure Easter.<\/p>\n

Hope, faith, peace.\u00a0 Qualities of mind and heart that are all too elusive these days, whether I am scanning the front page of the newspaper or discussing summer jobs with my two sons.<\/p>\n

My husband, the boys, and I are scattered between three states on this spring Sunday.\u00a0 There will be no family pew at church, no crowd around the table, no chocolate bunnies or colored eggs tucked beneath the bushes in the yard. We\u2019ll talk on the phone later, reminisce about the year the crows stole the eggs before the kids got outside, or the time Jack peered out the bathroom window, wiping sleep from his eyes, and realized to his horror that the Easter Bunny was dad.\u00a0 And it will be hard not to mourn what was–my children\u2019s childhoods, our own youth, the passing of all those other Easter mornings, receding now into distant memory.<\/p>\n

The sky beyond the bedroom window brightens by degrees, purple to rose shot through with blue as the fog lifts.\u00a0My mom has put coffee on, Henry sleeps in the room next door.\u00a0 The morning is, of course, it\u2019s own metaphor:\u00a0 light following darkness.\u00a0 And I realize that I can take a cue from that, the familiar cycle of night and day, winter turning to spring, lawns greening after long winter dormancy, the mockingbird returning to the same low bush beneath the window to build her nest of twigs, this eternal process of life, death, rebirth.<\/p>\n

I talked with Steve on the phone yesterday; he was busy at our house, changing bed sheets, putting screens in windows, bringing lawn chairs out of storage.\u00a0 \u201cCome home,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a different world than the one you left.\u201d\u00a0 Three weeks ago he and Jack and I drove to the airport through a snowstorm.\u00a0 When I return this week, it will be to a new season altogether.<\/p>\n

And so on this last day here of a long spring break, the last day before Henry heads back to college and I fly back to New Hampshire, I aspire to my own small fresh beginning.\u00a0 The more my life has changed–and changed it has over this last year–the more I have found myself yearning to control the uncontrollable — grown children, my own aging body, a husband\u2019s mood, a friend\u2019s illness, transformed holidays.\u00a0 I\u2019ve directed way too much of my time, energy, love, and attention in the one direction where it is not wanted at the moment, toward a teenaged son determined to do things his way. And in the process, I\u2019ve neglected other things that are truly important to me, not to mention other people in my life who might welcome a bit more of my attention.<\/p>\n

It is the not knowing what comes next that makes me afraid, the sense of helplessness I feel when confronted with the morning\u2019s grim headlines, a dear friend\u2019s diagnosis, a son\u2019s poor choice.\u00a0 How much better to remember that uncertainty is always\u00a0 part of the picture, fragility part of our human condition. \u00a0If not for sadness, there would be no joy. Faith wavers, is tested by adversity, and is thus restored. Darkness, an inevitable part of life, is always followed by light.<\/p>\n

\u201cHealing,\u201d as Pema Chodron reminds us, \u201ccan be found in the tenderness of pain itself.\u201d\u00a0 On this Easter morning I aspire to a small resurrection of the heart.\u00a0 I will get up in a moment, take a walk with my son, go to brunch and read the New York Times.\u00a0 But the real action will take place on the inside, as I remind myself to open, soften, and take the world in just as it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is still dark, misty-foggy, the velvet sky reminiscent of so many other Florida dawns. Sunrise comes late on the west coast, the day revealing itself slowly.\u00a0 Beyond the wide-open sliding doors: the dull tide of distant traffic, the sibilant chirrups of birds waking.\u00a0 For an hour I\u2019ve been lying in bed, listening to\u00a0 morning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,26,32,35,39,8,10,14],"tags":[173,336,454],"class_list":{"0":"post-192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-acceptance","8":"category-change","9":"category-faith","10":"category-healing","11":"category-letting-go","12":"category-midlife","13":"category-parenting","14":"category-parenting-teens","15":"category-soul-work","16":"tag-faith-2","17":"tag-pema-chodron","18":"tag-uncertainty","19":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}