Happy Easter Everyone!

Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays - until recently.

It used to be a time to get up early and watch my children rub the sleep from their eyes, getting excited about their Easter baskets. It was a time to pack up days worth of cooking for the Easter Picnic - which was often in foul weather. It was a family tradition, dating back generations. Often we would drive over the Sierras to California to meet family for our picnic, since Nevada is often raw in the early Spring.

But lately the children are grown, and live 600 miles away. It's just not easy to be together for every holiday. And for some strange reason we forgot about Easter this year and visited our family in Portland last weekend! Why we didn't check the calendar and make it this weekend I will never know.

Anyway, we will do what we did last year and attend a lovely Easter Brunch at the Lone Eagle Grill right on Lake Tahoe. It is always festive, and after a few glasses of champagne I get over the loss of my family tradition. Next year, however, I think it's time to rally the troops and make sure I have everyone together to watch my then-four-year-old grandson compete with his cousins for eggs. I know I'll have to give up one of the other holidays but it will be worth it. I'll make potato salad and milanesa sandwiches, and watch the next generation after our children (whew!), carry on the family Easter tradition.

What do you do?

New Traditions

It's not easy giving up old traditions. Christmas is not so much a religious holiday for us, but more of a celebration of giving and being grateful for our many blessings. (We tend to tilt more toward spiritual beliefs, as opposed to purely Christian.) It has always included decorating, Santa's Breakfasts for the local Children's Cabinet, Christmas Eve services, cookie decorating with friends, making cream puffs for our neighbors. Now my daughters are grown, and have their own ideas about the holidays, and they don't always gel with mine. Norman Rockwell? Not.

My hairdresser was lamenting the loss of tradition earlier this week. Her children no longer foster the same excitement they once did, her oldest has moved out of the home and doesn't plan on being back for Christmas Day. The others have requested gift cards. She's sad. So she has decided to trail along with a friend, dressed as Santa, to visit disadvantaged children. 

I know how she feels. I guess for some reason I thought things would always stay the same - my daughters would want to carry on the same traditions they always seemed to enjoy while growing up. I would sit back and watch them do all the things I did to make the season special. But now I wonder - what was I thinking? Why would they want to do the same things as adults that they did as children? Of course things need to change! It's time for new traditions, new memories. It's time to either do it their way, or do my own thing. Which isn't so bad once you get used to the idea. 

So this year we'll create something new for ourselves. Change is the only constant in this world, so I may as well hop on board and enjoy the ride. Lucy is happily ensconced in her own home with dog and house sitters, so we feel better about leaving her. The kennel is not a good place for a little black princess on Christmas Day.

This is a year that finds most of us embracing some kind of change. For many, hardship is the guest, and/or life as they have known it will not ever be the same. My heart goes out to each and every one of them. But for some of us - new customs are not all bad. Life is full of surprises, and some of them are really wonderful. We never know what is right around the corner.

Has your holiday traditions changed this year? What are you doing different?

Where do the years go?

One of my girlfriends, that has been a friend for over 35 years, come up to spend the night and go to the lake with me today. It was fun catching up, as we rarely talk on the phone more than a couple times a year. But many years ago, when we were both very young and single, we developed a tradition of going to the lake at least once a year. When we first started going we had our bottle of wine and some towels, maybe a sandwich, and headed for the beaches you have to hike down from the road to access.

Over the years that changed to the crowded Sand Harbor beach with very soft sand that our children played in with their buckets and shovels. It has an area that is protected and shallow - which makes it warmer than the lake and ideal for little swimmers.

A few years ago my daughters and her daughter quit going with us, opting to go to the lake with their friends (to the beaches you hike down to access.)

This year our day was spent on the West end of the lake at a park that was an old mansion and playground for the rich and famous during the days of the Comstock and timber barrons out of San Francisco.

You can tour the mansion and the grounds and/or sit under some lovely trees on rolling green grass the extends down to the beach and water:

We sat mostly under the trees, as tanning is not something either of us does anymore, sans the bottle of wine. Wine? In the middle of the day at the beach? Ummm who's DD? We didn't swim much, something that we have always enjoyed doing together. But we talked and enjoyed the view, and the companionship that comes from years of knowing one another. We caught up on what our children were doing, how their lives have turned out so far, what they aspire to in the future.

We realized that time has marched right along. Our children are now in charge of their lives, making their own decisions, creating their worlds. Ours has changed. We are slowing down, enjoying the little things, the small moments. Our bodies have changed, our hair, wrinkles have appeared. But we are still the same in so many ways. All the little ways that attracted us to each other all those years ago. We may think differently, but we respect each other. We know each other's tender places, because we were there when they were experienced. The scars that are healed now, but were once so raw.

And we wonder - what is in store for us now? How many more years will we come to the lake for our day?