As would be expected, I’ve had the occasional day where I’ve thought more about my dad than other days. With spring here and plants and flowers sprouting all around, I think that these thoughts have been more frequent because its getting close to Easter and the weather is slowly warming.

Most Easter mornings consisted of all 10 of us kids rising early  to find colorful Easter baskets filled with candy, enough to make each one of us  very happy for a very long time.

For as long as I can remember, we went to Easter mass at St. Francis Church in Torrington.The service began at 12 noon so I can’t recall if we ate lunch before or after mass. Speaking of that lunch, it was always amazing, with ham, baked or mashed potatoes, tossed salad and dessert. Oh yes, the dessert: a tasty rabbits’ head cake that mom made each year that had white-I don’t recall the flavor- cake and icing along with white frosting, two pink jelly beans for eyes, a black jelly bean for the nose and  black licorice for whiskers. Man was that tasty!

Anyway, I believe this is why I am thinking of dad little more and with a little heavier heart, but I’m fine because there were such good memories. Now, I don’t remember gifts being as plentiful as Christmas, but that was never the point of Easter, in my opinion. To me, even then, if I were serving Mass as an alter boy, I would look out to the packed church looking for that well-dressed, well(well, usually well-behaved) family and my always proud parents and think to myself, “I might be young but I still realize that I’m blessed to be a part of this family.”

Going back to mom and dad, I imagine that they will be having a wild celebration with mom, already a veteran of past heavenly Easters, showing dad exactly how they have fun in the heavenly land. Who knows? Maybe mom somehow made one of her hams, just for old times sake.

Anyway, I thought, with Easter approaching it would be fun to reminisce and tell you some of my thoughts and memories about my family and parents and how we celebrated Easter. Of course, my brothers and sisters still mean the world to me and always will, just like mom and dad did.

Wishing a Happy and safe Easter to all!!