there goes peter cottontail

a few minutes after getting to work today, both of my officemates asked me, "how was your easter?" and "what did you do for easter?" apparently i'm the only person on the planet besides my ex-boyfriend who didn't have any extravagant easter plans, because if i had a dime for every time i've heard "what are your easter plans?" (or a variation on this theme) i'd have at least $1.75. how do you get $1.75 when you're only counting dimes? i don't know; you're the mathematician, you figure it out. my guess is that it has something to do with the plummeting value of the dollar versus the euro. yet i digress.

so, even though i didn't have any "easter plans," the pressure to invent "easter plans" bore down on me like, oh, say, two big pieces of lumber that were nailed together to form a "t" shape. growing up, easter dinner consisted of brunch at the country club; my family was never really the kind that had all the kinfolk over for a big southern brunch on the lawn. we're a small, close-knit family of distrusting w.a.s.p.'s. we go to church on easter morning, go to the club for brunch, and go home happy. some people might not call this much of a family tradition, but i became inexplicably homesick for it. after i finished singing an easter service from which i derived no joy (by the end of holy week, every professional singer/church musician is ready to get up on the cross themselves; not to mention the fact that i'm not even christian), i walked home to my warm, dark apartment to find my ex-boyfriend asleep in bed, by which i mean asleep on the futon. suddenly the whole situation struck me as so sad. i make fun of all these people with their big easter dinners and families, yet i'm the one secretly crying in the bathroom in an apartment that i used to share with my boyfriend in a city that i don't understand.

after i pulled myself together terry and i went to lunch at don pablo's. i took a long nap. i went to a fancy dinner with george, tom, and tom's mom. she insisted on paying. i did so many out-of-the-ordinary things yesterday to make easter sunday feel special. in the end, it just felt like any other day.