Jesus Is Weeping...

Once again this year, we maintain the fiction that my brother and I are 4 and 12 respectively, and have the obligatory Easter Egg hunt--a very contained scenario, inasmuch as we're essentially confined to the tiny confines of the main room of the second-rate beach house my parents are renting while they add a second story to theirs (yes, they do have money, thanks). And, as we've begun to do in recent years, my brother and I have taken over hiding the eggs, leaving my parents--both in their early-to-mid-60s, mind you--to hunt.

Which wouldn't seem too pathetic, except for my mother. Who treats the hunt--a competition of who finds the most--with a ruthless severity--as if the loser will, in fact, suffer ritual execution (I suppose "scourging and crucifixion" comes to mind)--and rushes from potential hiding-place to potential hiding-place in frantic excitement, screaming (no, not an expression) with frustration when she and my father happen upon the same egg--"NOOOOOO!!!!"--and by the time we get down to the last few, she's giving him full-blown body checks out of the way, and calling him names that simply don't seem to go with the spirit of the holiday.

Fortunately for us, she won this year. Which means we don't have to hear finds disputed and scores debated for, oh, the next year or so. Happy Easter. Christos aneste--Alithos aneste.