Happy Easter

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, a holiday full of joy for our savior rising and bringing new life. It was supposed to be a traditional happy family holiday. Well you know those family holidays that just go horribly wrong, in fact the opposite of how we plan them? Well in my family this happens just about every holiday. It all started with the traditional catholic morning church service. My mom prohibited my dad from wearing blue jeans. Big mistake, as we now learned this was the cause of multiple bad moods throughout the day. Following, came the fact that there were no donuts were they should be after church. Instead there was an Easter egg hunt outside strictly for kids under the age of twelve. This was strike two. So we took a trip to Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts. There were a couple more fights during the five minute car ride. So far Easter was a great success.

We usually celebrate Easter with family friends whom I like to call the ideal perfect family. It’s amazing they never fight, never raise a finger or a voice. They look like they’ve popped out of a J Crew catalogue. Easter for them requires matching cashmere for the men and Mary Ashley outfits for the girls. They take their family photo, later to be photo shopped onto their spring cards that they send out to everyone. Well in my mother’s mind this was the ideal Easter. Imagine her surprise when her daughter couldn’t even where a dress due to crutches and a severe sun burn, her son couldn’t care less about matching his own outfit, and her husband was mad about not being able to wear blue jeans to church. In fact the only one who was matching in her ideal family picture she had built up in her mind, was herself. She merely had to mind photo shop us in her picture to have matching outfits.  

So as the day continued it only got better. We went out for lunch to an Italian restraint with some of my dad’s friends from the bank that we have known ever since I was about five. The perfect family had gone to Las Vegas for the week. Does anyone else see the irony in this? Well of course bank friend’s means bank talk. My mom dislikes bank talk intensely. We went from talking about one Argentinean to another, from bank loans, to jackpot destinations for bank jobs. They talked for three hours straight about strictly bank. This clearly did not fit into my mom’s ideal Easter Sunday.

So after tears and fighting my mom finally gathered everyone to dinner. Nobody talked for about five minutes. My mom had made a soup that tasted of pure wine. She sometimes doesn’t quite measure the amount of alcohol she puts into her dishes. So everyone ate silently trying to bear the winey soup until my dad realized if he didn’t fix things he might end up in the dog house so he began, “The thing is it’s your mother…” (bad start). “Do not start with my mother!” said my mom. “See she created these high expectations for everybody about Easter... she wears these flowery dresses…”. Pretty soon the whole table was laughing about the Easter fail. Then my brother starts complaining about the soup, which gets my mom in a worse mood. My dad again tries to fix this to save himself from the dog house, “Eat your Easter soup men!” he says. I don’t know how this ended up the way it did, but the nice Easter dinner ended in my dad and brother trying to “titty twister” each other. Happy Easter everyone.