Well...

...my daughter and her best friend are sleeping in my bed, my father’s ex-wife is sleeping in my guest room, there are three cats in my spare room and my dog is in a crate in the living room. I’m sitting next to the aquarium and I’m eyeballing the door 10 feet to my right. I have half a tank of gas and a pocket full of small bills. I could get all Springsteeny and see if those two lanes really can take me anywhere but I think I’ll just finish my drink and go to bed instead.

I’ve come a long way, haven’t I? Not very long ago I was complaining about being lonely, wasn’t I? Well, I’m not lonely now.

I’m not complaining, not one little bit. I appreciate this house full of people even if they will trash my house before Easter dinner is over. I’d like to hide eggs but my daughter probably wouldn’t look for them. I suppose I could decorate them, but they would have to be some hellacious Easter eggs to impress a house full of adults. (I can’t believe hellacious was in my spell check data base, can you?) I think I’ll do something memorable.

My most memorable Easter involved an egg that wasn't found until August so I can’t pattern it after that. My next most memorable Easter was probably the time that I learned the truth about the Easter Bunny.

I’m the oldest of 6 kids and I like to say I am the smartest (I don’t know how true it is, I just like to say it.) so I would wake up before the other kids and grab the lion’s share of the eggs. One year I couldn’t find any eggs but I found my mother asleep on the couch. I tapped her on the shoulder and told her that the Easter Bunny hadn’t come. She jumped up, handed me a basket of eggs and said, “Oh shit! Here Margaret, help me hide these eggs!”

My mother was a hoot. She would dress up as a witch on Halloween and scare the kids as they came to the door. Hell, she scared me. She was the most frightening when she was in her “around the house-wear”.

She was the type of woman who would drive her husband to the train station in her pajamas. When I was in my tender adolescent years, she came to my junior high school to drop off my lunch money. I stared in horror as she walked toward me wearing a green checked flannel jacket over her pink linen nightgown with my father’s argyle socks hanging around her ankles all topped off with the curlers in her hair.

I took the 35 cents from her and she walked away. A kid asked me if that was my mother. I said, “Nope. It’s a poor lady we pay to run errands for us.”

I used to feel guilty about that until I told my mother about it. She thought it was funny so I can laugh at it now as well.

My mother was the type of person who could evoke fond feelings for grasshoppers. She saw every glass as half full and every bum as unloved. I think she had something to do with the “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” Coke commercial. She was very sociable and loved to be in a crowd. I lost her a few years ago but I know she isn’t alone.

My mother’s funeral was the first that I have ever “hosted”. At one point, I was standing near my mother’s head and greeting people as they paid their respects. I turned my back for a minute and when I looked back, my mother had a box in her hand. I was rather taken aback.

I looked at it. I looked at my cousin Anne. Anne shook her head and I looked back at the box. I had no idea from where my mother had gotten that box. Anne and I discussed it and we decided that I should pick up the box and examine it.

When I looked at it, I noticed that there was some writing on the bottom. Anne and I were trying to read it when a lady I had never seen before stopped us. She said, “That’s MY mother...she was a friend of your mother and I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

So...what do you say in that situation?

I thought about my mother on the back of a Chevy Malibu convertable in a parade, waving at the people. She was a politician in DuPage County, Illinois. Every single memory I have of my mother involves her talking. It’s no fun to be alone and I think my mother would have welcomed the company so I said, “Sure, my mother would love to have your mother.”

Every bed in my house has at least one person sleeping on it and I am thrilled. I can’t wait to spend the entire weekend cooking and hosting a memorable holiday. I think I am going to have a lot of fun. Of course, the Cutty Sark HAS kicked in.

Meg