Easter Musings

I wake up coughing and sputtering. After six weeks of travel—weekends in San Diego and Ashville, NC, followed by four non-stop days in NYC with 15 Laurel students, and then four more days—at a slightly less frantic pace—in London with my sister, I succumb to a cold that Seth has most generously shared, and spend yesterday—and, today, too, I suspect—lying low.

It’s Easter, but here in Shaker Heights, with my Jewish husband and without young children excited about bunnies and egg hunts and baskets, I wonder what the day means to me and feel a little blue. 

Death and resurrection. At 63, I am more conscious of aging than I’ve ever been, more aware of how often I feel pulled by recollection, by memory.  I remember Easter luncheon at our grandparents. A huge baked ham and an egg cracking contest and an egg hunt in own pachysandra. I think about making baskets for Miranda and Cordelia and Atticus—a long time ago now. Seth used to tease me and say that the baskets were just another version of Christmas stockings, and he was right. But Easter lunch, like Thanksgiving and Passover and Christmas, was another opportunity to use the “good” china, to be together, to make  memories. Sitting with my laptop, I hear my mother’s voice in my head, singing all the Easter hymns. “Jesus Christ has risen today, Ahhhhh-lay—luu—ya.”

We go to London on a whim; during my last bout with Covid in early January, I wondered how to celebrate my sister’s birthday—a significant birthday—and, feverish, before I could second guess myself, I decide we will return to London—more than fifty years after our first trip there as a family. Lee’s daughters collude with me to be sure her calendar is free, and Miranda makes a surprise video to land in Lee’s email box on the morning of her birthday since I am in California that day. I hope she will be excited—and she is. Seth is our gracious chauffeur, drove us from Eagles Mere to JFK—the worst airport I could have chosen, he explains—Newark would have been a lot easier, but it is too late by then to change the tickets.

I booked us into the same hotel where our family stayed in 1972, the Duke’s Hotel, now rebranded as DUKE’S London, famous for its martinis! It is a lovely, elegant hotel, where the staff greets us by name each morning.  Long ago, Daddy didn’t want to pay for the roll out cot, so Rod slept in the bathtub and fell asleep on his Yorkshire pudding at Simpson’s on the Strand. Lee and I slept in twin beds shoved right next to each other! We strolled around London together, sliding between past and present the way sisters do.  Rain showers come and go; my sister reminding me that we are not wicked enough to melt. We found the Tube charming, much less dingy than the subways in NYC. Descending on the steep escalators, Lee recalled our brother’s antics—he loved to quote the ads in the frames along the wall as we sank further underground. I grasp at memories. We remember different bits in elegy. At the Burlington Arcade, we stopped with our mother long ago, and she bought two enamel rings—emerald green and royal blue—that she wore and wore. What happened to them? My sister doesn’t know and neither do I. For fun, Lee tried on an enormous dinner ring—a huge diamond edged in emeralds. It is a steal at 74,000 pounds. We thanked the saleswoman and left the shop, giggling on the street. It entertained us to make believe, even at 70 and 63.

Our trip is like one huge version of the high tea we enjoyed at Fortnum and Mason’s—a tribute to our dad, who was the original Anglophile. The days are delectable, out of the ordinary, a confection. At the musical SIX, we recalled Daddy’s love of British history. I wonder if Henry VIII might have been Dad’s role model. They both loved the ladies. Having the six wives reclaim their story pleased me. I stole glimpses at my sister from time to time; she seemed to like the show, too, and I realized how much I wanted her to feel celebrated and cherished on this trip. After our mother died, my sister called me every day for months; she knew my grief was too large for me to manage by myself. She is a caretaker—of me, of her own children, of the little village of Eagles Mere, where she lives.

We roamed and laughed and drank prosecco and enjoyed John Singer Sargent’s gorgeous portraits at the Tate. My visit to the Biltmore was still fresh in my mind as was my time with our students at the Morgan Library. Thoughts of the Gilded Age swirled: an era of extraordinary wealth, wretched excess, and the desire to show off one’s family—to stake a claim, to assure one would be remembered. I think of white men acquiring possessions, hoping for posterity, My head is tangled up with musings. As we moved through the exhibit listening dutifully to the audio guide, I noticed  how Sergant’s subjects were positioned, his choices of fabric and draping, the stories each painting told. Several of the sitters’ dresses and accessories are displayed near the portraits—Ellen Terry’s costume for Lady M, for example, is made of a crocheted fabric with beetle wings knit into it. Astonishing. The rich and famous seem to have been better about keeping their fancy clothes wrapped up in tissue and preserved for more than a century than I am. Or, perhaps, their help was better at preservation.

I, too, will soon have my portrait painted. Sargent is, sadly, unavailable. But the mother of a alum who was a student during my tenure will paint me.  I wonder about my image hanging in the school I love long after I am gone. Some years ago, I moved the portraits of the heads at Laurel around a few years ago; I thought Mrs. Lyman and Miss Lake might enjoy a different view. I wonder where the painting of me will hang. Legacy. Do we ever understand what it is we leave behind? Did Sargent’s subjects wonder how strangers in galleries would perceive them, what viewers would presume or wonder about the lives they lived from those careful compositions? Did Sargent shave off pounds or soften edges? Could those illustrious beings from long ago imagine that we would walk through the Tate and wonder about their lives and loves and sorrows? Can I imagine little girls looking up at my image and wondering about me? or the students from the NYC trip coming back to school for a reunion and pausing in front of my portrait to tell stories about our metropolitan adventures? The possibility pleases me.

Easter means death and rebirth, hugging the whole experience.  On this foggy Easter morning, I note that spring in Shaker Heights is not as advanced as it was in London. But the green is greener than it was when I left two weeks ago. The daffodils are chatting, bending their heads towards on another in our garden. The hyacinths aren’t yet in bloom, but their buds are swelling.  I am drinking my coffee from a new lavender mug my sister bought for me when we went for high tea. My sister and I. Two out of the five of us left.  Two out of five.  Death, rebirth. We chat on the phone this morning. I miss having her with me. But it’s not all melancholy.  Loss is balanced by addition. Family rituals shift and change.  We make our own families, and our children make their own families, too. The generations contract, expand, move forward. There is hope and comfort in the idea that the future spools out. Those who leave us stay with us through shared reminiscences. I tell stories about my brother to my own children; we claim and reclaim the past and add new stories to the family canon.

Nothing stays the same. Vacations end. Colds improve. The seasons pass.  We stand in the present and look back and wonder what lies ahead. Perhaps there will come a time that little children in my life once again require Easter baskets. I’ll be ready.