Eggstastic

Seven years ago my youngest left home to go to college. At first I was so excited for him and for me, the future seemed unbounded, limitless horizon. Then Easter rolled around and I felt the most profound sense of loss when he couldn't come home. Suddenly I realized these last months weren't a vacation from parenthood, this was my new life. It felt really empty.

Feeling blue, I stared out the window thinking about how this new life with children who'd flown the coop was REALLY going to feel. In the middle of this reveries the next-door-neighbor's grandchildren were spilling out of the car and making happy children's noises.

From that happy noise the Grandma Brigade was born.

The Grandma Brigade in action

The Grandma Brigade waxes and wanes, but from the beginning it has been my good friend Joni and Joanie. Yes they have the same name, spelled differently but when the children are yelling "Grandma" we all answer. Sometimes other Grandmas join us, regardless we three have been coloring Easter eggs, making May baskets, gingerbread houses and Valentines together now for seven years.

Today was time to color the Easter eggs!

The oldest of our artists is now 11 and youngest at 5 wasn't even born when we started.  Isn't that the wonder of starting new traditions? In short order to an 11-year-old or 5-year-old our holidays traditions so recently started are just-the-way-things-are.

Through change and loss, love and growth, tears and smiles the network of friends and lives shared buoys us.

It is in expressing love through traditions shared,  simple acts liking dipping an egg in food coloring, squeezing half a bottle of white glue on some red construction paper so that we can sprinkle it with glitter, licking frosting off our fingers and the back of candy before we stick a candy cane on some gingerbread that we taste that sweet, silly thing called life.

Wishing you all the most blessed Easter.