Happy Easter

I am not a religious person but I have always loved Easter. When I was a girl, we'd go to church the night before. My grandmother held my hands in hers to keep them warm, a small thing between us, always, because my hands are known, even to this day, for being ice cold.

The Easter Vigil mass at St. Paul's was spectacle. It was black night dark even inside, where we entered holding candles. We'd shuffle in the pews soundlessly, creating neat rows of soft, swaying light. The sermon was long but full of quiet song, and we named hundreds of saints, asking, almost humbly, for their prayers.

As the night progressed my candle would melt towards its little paper holder. I'd worry the wavering flame would extinguish too soon. But, as midnight came, I'd hear the booming sound, the eager tribal beat of drums, and my eyes would flicker and turn, as one by one, the lights above came on, one after the other, until the entire church was blazing yellow and gold and gilded again, a small symphony, no longer brewing, but blaring, vibrating through the walls to my jittering insides.

I love this day for the memory of those nights, the hands that held mine, and all the day symbolizes. For the hint of crocus through the dead leaves, the sunrise of daffodils, the rainbow of tulips in their rows. For the newness of light after darkness. For the rising, the discovery, the wonder, the miracle, the tale of rebirth.

Monday Quiet in Nice, France

I once spent Easter weekend in Rome and Vatican City with my friend Lynn. The alter of my memory is gilded gold, a four poster bed of towering candlesticks.  The crowds outside the Vatican pulsed with a kind of fury I didn't understand and if I close my eyes, I remember the sleeve of a nun's cotton dress at my cheek, the tweed of a man's suit at my wrists, we were that close together, all of us, dancing a swell of emotion.

I saw tears and mercied fists shaking up at pressing skies, such was the hunger around me to experience what I had merely come to see. I remember Rome alive, even on Easter, with silverware clanking at outdoor tables, fountain splashing plazas, and scooters bumbling across cobblestone.

I don't know the time of day we left or which train window I slept against.  I don't remember the station or the hostel or stepping out into the air.  What I do remember of Nice, France, when we arrived on this particular Monday after Easter, in 2001, an April that may be like this one, despite the years, is startling quiet.

Something makes me think the streets were pebbled white.  Somehow, even if the pictures show salty blue, my memory sees sheets, yes sheets, white, folded, clean. I remember our whispers, our wonder, why is nothing open? the lights beyond the glass in their vaguely brown dim, the  streets of the old city, faded and empty.

I don't know how long we wandered alone, who we asked or when, only their surprise that we did not know, It's Easter Monday. It's sacred.

Each year, I tell Tyler this same story, how I had spent Easter, the holiest of Christian holidays, at the Vatican, one of the holiest of cites, and everything bustled and towered and sang.  And then we travelled to France the day after, walked hallowed streets, everything solemn and still.

So, I always think of Nice on the day after Easter and try to honor the day as it felt to me.  The surprise of that beautiful, quiet, reflective Monday. A city asleep next to the sea.