This is by far my favorite time of the year.  Easter is my favorite religious celebration and Baseball is my favorite sport.  Some musings on both.

 

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, the first Easter without mom.  She left the planet in May of 2012.  .  Mom always had brunch on Easter Sunday.  She put so much effort into what was always a fabulous spread of culinary delights.  Mom was a great cook.  Tradition changed.

 

Our family enjoyed Easter brunch yesterday, gathering at my sister's house.  It obviously wasn't the same without mom but there was something other than mom missing.  One of the dishes mom always served was a thin ham and sauce concoction that you put over biscuits.  No one could find the recipe.  We had everything else, the egg casseroles, the danish, the fruit, the goetta (a German breakfast sausage popular in the Greater Cincinnati Area).  

 

Maybe mom had a hand in that.  We think maybe the recipe was never written down.  She just knew what to do.  Maybe mom kept that with her yesterday to let us know that it's ok to move on. She's ok. We'll see her again soon.  Thanks mom and Happy Easter.

 

Today is Opening Day in Cincinnati, an unofficial holiday.  Hope springs eternal on Opening Day.  The start of a new season; anticipation of a great year; the promise of warmer temperatures, the smell of spring;  Of all of the sports, only baseball, I think, is better experienced in person, at the ball park.  

 

Baseball is such the antithesis in our warp speed world.  No time, no clock, 9 innings, could take 2 hours, could take 4.  Beer, peanuts, hot dogs.  Being outside on a warm sunny day...

 

“People will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. "Of course, we won't mind if you look around", you'll say, "It's only $20 per person". They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh...people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”
― James Earl Jones