Gliding

Yesterday's Easter was like a golden retriever: It took nothing out of me, it filled me with love, and it calmed my nervous system.

Morning Easter baskets with the children, lollipops in the flower bed, carrot crumbs on the porch from the Easter Bunny, aka Alice. Excitement and sugar with enough morning routine woven in to keep us grounded. Plenty of coffee.

I wore my flowered jumpsuit, let my hair curl naturally.

The kids played companionably on the drive north; my only complaint was the volume. My aunt and uncle live in a community with more trees than people scattered among the modest mountains. The weather was perfect. The children embarked on an egg hunt; biked; ate dinner rolls, a few grapes, and cupcakes crowned with Peeps; and learned lacrosse. The adults sat on the front porch on honey-colored benches made warm by the afternoon sun. A single car passed on the hilly dirt road the entire afternoon. My aunt had devoted her winter, in part, to creating seven quilts, one for each child, just like her mother and grandmother before her. I had a quiet conversation with another beloved aunt, one who is gentle and insightful and safe. My cousin brought her teenage sons' old Batman toys for my kiddos. B and C stuffed them into the truck and invented elaborate games for Robin and crew the whole ride home. The fifty-minute drive was only interrupted by a stop at a family-run garden center, just opened for the season.

My heart-rate never spiked. My children were happy and regulated, and I didn't worry about where they were or what they were doing. A family member who causes me the most panic and pain wasn't present, and I could just be. I wasn't afraid or on high alert. I knew I was safe.

I do not expect to glide through life, but days like yesterday are gifts. I felt like the sunshine on the shallow river passing through town. I felt at peace. I felt connected to the land, just like earlier generations of my family. (And what about the Abenaki, who lived there even earlier?) The day reminded me of Donald Hall's Ox-Cart Man. The spare, New England cadence of his poetry is beautifully illustrated by Barbara Cooney. The pared-down descriptions in the lines create a full world, but one deeply grounded and steady in its simplicity.

Then he walked home, with the needle and the knife

and the wintergreen peppermint candies tucked into the kettle,

and a stick over his shoulder, stuck through the kettle's handle,

and coins still in his pockets,

past farms and villages,

over hills, through valleys, by streams,

until he came to his farm,

and his son, his daughter, and his wife were waiting for him.