My Little Man is fascinated with Easter. Anything with candy, of course, but the eggs and bunnies are perplexing to him. Adorably perplexing, as in, he finds them adorable and he is perplexed by them. Kind of like Captain Kirk was with the Tribbles.

from wikipedia

Me: (big long pause… should I go into the pagan aspect or the Christian aspect? hmm. since the pagans started it and Christians layered Christianity over it to convert more pagans, maybe I’ll start with the pagan aspect and move into Christianity when he gets older…. yeah – that’s what I’ll do!!)
It’s a celebration of fertility and new life, honey!

Me: Fertility is someone’s ability to make life, sweetie. Like Mommy is growing a baby in her now? That’s Mommy being fertile and new life growing.

Me: YES! Exactly! We all come from eggs, one way or the other, so the eggs are a way of celebrating new life too. ALSO, sweets, it’s spring, and spring means more new life – new plants and new flowers and new things coming up out of the ground.

Me: Well, uh, sort of. Just like the egg in Mommy changes with Daddy’s swimmers? The egg in the Mommy bunny changes too. But people like to celebrate bunnies on Easter because bunnies have LOTS and LOTS of babies! Lots of new life!

Me: yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh.

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Micah freaked me out the other day in a pretty big way. Up, out of the blue over breakfast he says:

Me: Hmm? You remember being in me?

Me: What was it like?

Me: Did you move around a lot?

…CHILLS UP MY SPINE…

Me: do you remember being born?

Micah: (casually taking another spoon full of oatmeal) Yeah

Me: what was that like?

Micah: it was COLD, so, so COLD! I was freezing! (and he demonstrated how cold he was)

…CHILLS UP MY SPINE…

Me: Moxie was with you?

Me: Moxie wasn’t in there with you, honey

… MORE CHILLS UP MY SPINE. I got kind of freaked at that point and had to stop because DO YOU REMEMBER? Micah was a TWIN. Micah’s twin died early on.

And so, I don’t know if he really remembers or not, but it’s more than a little flabbergasting what is coming out of him. I just hope he won’t send me to a nursing home for that time I let him fall off the bed when he was a baby…

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Micah *loves* reading to Moxie. He doesn’t “read” so much as he memorizes things (like he did with Tiki Tiki Tembo) then regurgitates (usually with his own special effects like guitar playing/harmonica/drumming/what-have-you)

Moxie gulps his reading up. Grunts and points and acts well, pretty much the exact same way he did when he was her age. When he’d trot over and get a book and bring it back and hand it imperiously to me, grunting: UH. UH!!!!! Moxie: same. exact. thing. Toddles to a book, picks it up, comes over to me, lays it in my lap like a bone, and grunts, UH. UHH!!

When Micah reads to her, she points and grunts and he doesn’t roll with it the way Mikey and I do. He has his own agenda, complete with the features of the story HE likes best and things she should, too, by golly. Like the excavators. The diggers. A story about a tree? Where are the tools? TOOLS. Like a “where’s waldo” picture, he can find a tool in any picture and is very clear about pointing that out to Moxie.

It makes me laugh. Internally, hysterically. Other little girls with older sisters get dolls upon dolls, it seems and my little girl gets trucks upon trucks, coupled with legos and trains.

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Back to Easter.

I like Easter. I like the new life symbolism, spring arriving. Chick-a-dees and green grass and egg hunts. I like all that. I also like the symbolism within Christianity – in that, after Christ died, the faith of the people waned and was dark, like death. Then arose – new life! – and Christianity surged again, the early Christians alight in their faith and on fire to teach it. I love stories of old Christianity, at a time in which it was so new, pure, whole and one. A time in which Christians were the odd ones out, the pariahs of their society, struggling for credence, striving to keep the faith when, after all, their prophet (who was called the Son of God, no less) had just been murdered by the Romans like a common thief.

And look at Christianity now.

Goes to show that with a little moxie and a lot of faith, all things are possible. New life comes and spring blossoms in the fresh glow of a radiant dawn.

Micah is counting the days till Sunday.

He wants his candy.

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