I have a fairly tumultuous relationship with public holidays, and this is especially true of religious holidays that have gone public. I mean, why am I given (read: forced to take) time off to celebrate the birth and death of Jesus instead of, say, Foucault? Why should I have to juggle work and participating in important cultural events just because my primary source of community has to do with my sexuality, and not my religious beliefs? Do we not live in a big enough, diverse enough, creative enough world to come up with some sort of holiday rostering system so that instead of the entire country shutting down all at once we could divvy things up between the Christians and the Jews and the Muslims and the Queers and the Footy fanatics and all the other various groups that hold more important other dates on the calendar?
I've been reflecting on holidays lately, and particularly on Easter because Australia has this whole 'hot cross bun' phenomenon that has mystified me for the past 4 years - but that's another story! Anyways, I've been thinking about the holidays and I've realized something: Easter has long been my favourite of the lot! (If you're curious, I deem Thanksgiving the worst. It's a blatant celebration of white privilege and turkey slaughtering, and I really don't think those are things to have a party about.)
Easter has always had this mythical, ethereal feel to it. There were attempts to bring me up Catholic - but like trying to raise a chicken to be a duck, it didn't take. I was always really perplexed and amused by the religious traditions that surround Easter. Ash Wednesday, Lent, the stations of the cross... they are all steeped in this seriousness and solemness that I could never understand. Perhaps because at the same time as all of this was going on, all the commercials on TV told of a magical egg laying bunny that comes once a year to deposit chocolate around your house.
You've gotta admit, that sends a pretty confusing message! I mean, at least there is some sort of a logical link between Santa and Jesus's birth: you get presents on your birthday! With Easter it's like: man gets tortured and killed and rises from the dead, so a bunny comes 'round and lays chocolate eggs at your house. I don't really know much about zombies, so maybe the logical conclusion of a zombie uprising IS a chocolate egg laying rabbit. I've seen lots of birthday celebrations and there's always an exchange of gifts. I've only ever celebrated the one zombie uprising, so I don't have a frame of reference for these things.
Growing up, the Easter tradition at my house was to have an Easter egg scavenger hunt. We'd wake up on Easter Sunday and discover that the Easter bunny had come by and deposited a handful of chocolate eggs in our rooms, along with a rather cryptic note (which, I think, is to be expected from a bunny who both lays chocolate eggs and has good penmanship). The note would contain a riddle, the solution to which would take you to your next clue - and next lot of chocolate. There would be a series of these notes scattered in all sorts of crazy locations throughout the house, and I believe the idea was that the riddles got progressively harder to solve as you got closer to finding your Easter basket - which was always filled with amazingness!
As I'm writing this, I'm seeing a link between my love of Easter and my lifelong love of pirates... which also reminds me of one of my favourite memories of my Dad. I used to go on searches for buried treasure, and would find really random things (like a dog's milk bone) and claim them as my treasure. One day, I drew up a pirates map and pretended that it was not something I had just completely made up myself. I asked my Dad to take me to the park so that we could investigate this map and go digging for buried treasure. We went to the park and eventually I decided that we had reached the 'X marks the spot' spot, and we started to dig. In a classic Dad move, my Dad made up some BS about how I should check just behind me, which I did. While my back was turned, he buried some coins and drew an X where I'd been sitting and called me back to inform me I'd been sitting on the X all along! I knew that he'd done it - I'm sure I probably stood there and told him off for doing it too (which he would have denied vehemently) - but I'm glad that he did. Even though I knew it was all make believe, he'd made the magic real.
Ha! Oh geez! This lifelong love of scavenger hunts and finding unexpected things... it's no wonder I grew up to be a researcher!!
But back to Easter! Those Easter egg hunts were the best! I remember one year my brother and I were gradually lead into the laundry room, where our Easter baskets were strategically hidden inside the washer and dryer. We both thought that was just absolutely preposterous of the Easter bunny! Silly rabbit! Another year, as I was getting older (and hence my riddles were getting a lot harder - I seem to recall some of them involving solving mathematical equations...), I was given a riddle that I was completely unable to solve. In my memory, we sat there for an hour while I tried to make sense of the bloody thing. Meanwhile, my little brother has solved all his clues and is happily making his way into a sugar coma.
I think in many ways my parents (and for those of you unfamiliar with my family dynamics, I have two sets) balanced each other out well: for all the attempts at 'gendering' I got from my Dad, my Mom taught me how to be self-sufficient and do my own heavy lifting. It's because of her that, no matter what happens in life, I can pick myself up and put myself back on track. I'm not really sure who's responsible for my love of doing laundry though...
I'm missing my family a lot this Easter. This year, my life... let's just say I passed 'full on' a few stops back! Being on my own, so far away from my family, sometimes it's tough. Now that I'm so close to finishing my thesis that I can almost taste it, what I need more than anything is to just lock myself away in a room where I can think big thoughts and not have to worry about the minutiae of life: those things like having food in the house, or cooking nutritious food, or having clean dishes, or having clean clothes, or earning an income... It's not the kind of thing that everyone is going to understand, but this level of intellectual work is fucking exhausting! It zaps your mental energy, leaving you in a zombie-like state where making small, day-to-day decisions that normally wouldn't seem to require much thought become painful. For example: I love cooking, but lately, the thought of having to find the time to cook has made me want to cry.
I have a lot of amazing friends who, seriously, I cannot even begin to explain how grateful I am for them and their support! Hubby especially. The number of times he's cooked for me, cut my hair, and just held my hand as I've freaked out... He makes up a lot for not having my family to turn to for those immediate, day-to-day things we all so often just need some help and support with. And he's certainly not the only one. I feel like I've got a whole village of people looking out for me and doing what they can to help me along, and I cannot even begin to express how much I appreciate everything that all of my friends do for me, big and small.
But still, I am really looking forward to going 'home' in a few months (dates still TBD) and just letting my family be responsible for my day-to-day existence, just for a bit!
