Columnists
Did someone say chocolate?
What do you get when you put two sons, two daughters-in-law, two granddaughters, one brother, LOML, one father of a daughter-in-law and I into a small house? Chocolate/Easter Weekend, that’s what you get.
I know I’ve said it before, sometimes it is difficult to find a topic for the weekly column and sometimes the column just writes itself. I’ve been wondering if I should I talk about the near destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral? I decided, maybe not. A goodly number of you wouldn’t understand how I feel about the loss of a historical architectural icon. You might even be surprised to learn that I was interested in the outcome of the fire, but not moved by the event. It’s a building. It’s an old building. It’s an old beautiful building. It was, for a brief moment in time, in peril of being a total loss. I wasn’t even surprised when news commentators spoke of what a tragedy it was, especially during the “holiest of weeks”. I, personally, was relieved to hear no lives were lost. I was pretty excited to learn that the bees of Notre Dame weren’t killed. I wasn’t even a little bit surprised by the number of mega-wealthy people who stepped up to the plate and offered financial assistance for the rehabilitation of the site. Not surprised at all. Maybe I was a little bit sad. It was a spectacularly beautiful building and by the sound of it, in no time it’ll be beautiful, once again. Nah, I don’t want to write about Notre Dame.
I am going to write about the chaos that is “Easter Weekend” at our house (aka Chocolate Weekend). Our family starts to arrive on Thursday evening and by Friday night, it’s a full house with airbeds in the playroom, suitcases and duffle bags in the spare rooms, the bathroom vanity is a lineup of make-up bags, toothbrushes and hair brushes, and the front hall becomes a minefield of shoes and boots. I’m probably talking to all y’all about a weekend to which most of you will be able to relate. Once the sleeping arrangements are sorted, the beverages and snacks come out and the music starts. Ever on my mind, on a long weekend, are the logistics of feeding the whole group. Just how many people does it take to get a holiday weekend meal, on the table when there are nine people in the kitchen, some with a beer or a glass of wine in hand, each offering an opinion on when the chicken should go into the oven and when it should come out and how much rice or how many rolls do you need to feed everyone— and the two little girls are dyeing eggs at the kitchen table. Multiply that by four days and at least two meals per day times ten people and a gal’s fritters get frazzled.
However much pandemonium, I am grateful for weekends like Chocolate Weekend. This old house is alive with laughter, music, a bad old movie or three, something boiling over on the stove, a beer being sideswiped onto the floor, peanuts being ground into the carpet, politics at the top of the collective voice, board games with bad words and more laughter. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t change it for anything, except maybe about five minutes of total silence every seven hours or so and maybe a chance to shower at a more convenient time. I hope, in one way or another, you had a wonderful long weekend. If you didn’t, put one on your calendar. I hear fireworks are lovely at this time of the year.
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