Improving my English: A special chronicle for you. Good Easter!

quinta-feira, 21 de abril de 2011

A special chronicle for you. Good Easter!

Easter Sunday almost always turns out to be a beautiful sunny day. And for the celebration of the Resurrection, it should not be otherwise really. With sunshine, joy and the squeals of the children as they hunt for their chocolate eggs, bunnies and other things that have come to symbolize the millennial celebration.

For Christians, it is a moment of peace and reunion. Jesus’s suffering is over and now all is joyful. And for other beliefs, today’s global closeness allows pleasant universal interaction.

So we’re all preparing ourselves for the family reunion, for the special meal, and for being especially careful in the presence of so much chocolate. Meanwhile, we remember good Easter Sundays from the past to be recalled during Sunday’s mid-afternoon conversation...

One such example is from the time I was living in a large one-floor house and the twins, Vanda and Valeria, were still little and innocent - that lovely age of belief in Santa Claus, fairies, witches and...the Easter bunny.

Their older sisters, especially Magali, would set the stage some days before, telling the twins that on a certain Sunday, Easter Sunday, a big rabbit would come down the chimney bringing them delicious chocolate eggs.

The twins would be both excited and afraid, not quite sure whether to feel happy about getting a big Easter egg or afraid of being frightened by a big rabbit, alive and in color, coming down the chimney. And to make it all more believable, the house actually had a big chimney, with a fireplace in the corner of the large living room.

When Easter Sunday morning came, the twins little hearts would already be beating anxiously the moment they woke up. They would put on their pretty new clothes, eat breakfast between nervous little giggles, then be led out into the garden by their sisters to see if the bunny had arrived. And to their surprise, fright, joy, all mixed together, there was the big rabbit on the roof, leaning against the chimney, all white with spikey whiskers and big ears, waving happily.

At that moment, the twins would let go of their sisters’ hands and run back into the house in fear. It took all sorts of talking to get them to go out into the garden again and smile and wave to the big rabbit.

All of a sudden, the rabbit would disappear... and show up, miraculously, in the living room beside the fireplace, with a pile of chocolate eggs in his paws.

From that moment on, it was all a happy party. The twins wouldn’t let the Easter Bunny go and wanted to know all about him. And the first thing they discovered was that he wasn’t a he - he was a she-bunny named Mimi. Talkative and playful, the bunny told them all sorts of stories about the faraway kingdom of Easter, inhabited by rabbits like her, who worked all year long to make the eggs for the celebration that Sunday.

After a while, Mimi would leave, promising to return the next year, and then suddenly there she was up on the roof again, leaning against the chimney and waving.

The children were brought inside... and didn’t see Mimi get down on the other side of the house, take off the bunny costume and turn into sister Magali. So when Magali came into the house, arriving from some made-up place, it was another celebration, with Vanda and Valeria trying to tell her all about what had happened.

I remember more than one Easter when Bunny Mimi crouched in fear on the roof. As the years went by, it got less scary.

For my twin girls, adults today, every Easter must still have its Bunny Mimi touch.

And Magali, former beauty bunny, surely misses those lovely, festive Easters when their imagination and joy made the difference between what could have been simply a nice celebration but which, thanks to her, became a time forever remembered, a time for sharing love.

April 20, 2000