palace of winds

Easter has become such a strange, quiet little holiday in our house since I was away at school. This was my first in four years and it seemed a soft echo of Christmas — the morning spent in the kitchen, the sink heaped with dishes and everyone moving in strange choreography, trying to coordinate so the entire meal might emerge whole and finished from the oven and stovetop at exactly the same moment; small gift bags in the afternoon; a slow sighing card game; ice cream; goodbyes. Lunch was pretty, though: Cornish game hens in apricot sauce, creamy potatoes, whole wheat stuffing, broccoli, French bread, fresh fruit.

And I didn’t feel hung over, thankfully. Though really I have the quietness of Saturday’s party to thank. It was nice. Jo and I fetched Chad and we met Stavros at Pizza Luce for sandwiches, then headed over to Lake Calhoun. The house was lovely and large and I felt a little pang every time someone sloshed liquor or ground a bit of cake into the dining room rug. Mostly people sat and stood around chatting, though there were other usual party things: the comparison of underwear, the discussion of breasts, a brief and ill-advised attempt at jump-roping, the cooing over the sweet puppy-faced dog, the finding in a worn copy of Ulysses of a picture of a dozen naked adults and one bathing-suited child posing by a lakeside. In addition there was a giant pig decorated with I think colored glass in the manner of perhaps a cherry tree? It put me in mind of Cows on Parade, in the sense that it was art made of a giant farm animal.

And now here it is Monday, and the next eight days I feel are going to defy the usual pace of time; the hours are going to sneak off and everything is going to fold together, and so I ought to grasp every moment that has not yet winked away.

Off I go.