Weathering Easter

There are few Easter mornings in my life when weather is so memorable that it makes a mark. In 1979, Easter Sunday happened the Sunday after an F-4 tornado tore a path through my home town (Wichita Falls, Texas). Until the May 3, 1999 tornadoes in and around Oklahoma City, the Wichita Falls tornado was the most expensive (in dollars, not lives) tornado in U.S. history.

We went to mass and I was wearing my new Easter dress. Mom and I had purchased that dress early in the afternoon on April 10, 1979 and I had laid out the dress on my bed -- my twin bed, so it covered most of the bed. It was as if a flat Dr. ER was lying on the bed, wearing that dress.

This takes a bit of background, I find:

Earlier in the year, I'd asked Daddy to take out the big double windows in my bedroom because my windows faced due west, and in Wichita Falls, that meant searing hot. No air conditioning could overcome such heat. So Daddy knocked out the windows, and put in a 2' X 3' window instead. It was like a box window; I could put my little high school knick knacks on the little shelf.

When we all ran to the cellar on April 10, 1979, for some reason, I closed my bedroom door on the way out; habit, likely.

When we rose from the cellar, the world was completely different -- the fences were down, Daddy screamed at us not to go near the downed power lines. And we didn't pay attention, at first, to the devastation at our home because our beloved Beagle, Belle, was nowhere to be found.

But later, when I opened my bedroom door (roof was mostly gone), it was exactly as I had left it. The dress remained flat-out on the bed, and I swear, there wasn't a speck of dust that wasn't already there after the tornado. My room was exactly as I had left it. Every other room in the house was damaged to some extent and my sister's room was completely off-limits, as glass was everywhere, it had rained inside, you name it.

And next Sunday, when we went to Easter Sunday mass, a man named Jerry, whose house had nothing left but slab, fell against mom and dad and wept...he was a greeter at church and he showed up to do his "job" at mass even though his life was in shambles.

And I was able to wear my new Easter dress...and I wore it for years after that, it being a style that was sort of timeless. I believe I wore it into college. From thereafter, though, we always called it my "tornado dress."

Today, the weather is different from what I'm accustomed to. I woke at nine, pulled back the drapes and saw that the world looked as if God had shaken confectioner's sugar all over everything. This, on top of the ice that kept me indoors all day yesterday -- the same ice that people in the Denver area obviously don't know how to drive on, and the same ice that caused fatality wrecks in the area since Friday.

Before I left for my (our, eventually) new life here near the Rockies, I made Easter baskets for ER, Bird and Yankeebeau, and I packed the two chocolate bunnies that ER had bought me when, a few weeks ago, I was in the middle of the kind of stomach virus that makes you want to die. So last night, while I watched "Moses, Moses," otherwise known at "The Ten Commandments," I cheated and ate my Dove bunny down to about the solar plexus.

After I pulled back the drapes this morning to see the weather, I checked my phone -- so the first greeting I got this morning was a text message from ER last night, panicking (like he does every year) about me doing the taxes. While I read it, he sent another text message (typed while driving on the way to Easter service), that read, merely, "Poop." I told him poop nothing, my first greeting from another human being on Easter Sunday was a panicked plea about taxes!

So I hope he gets to where he can rise above the emotional level of "Poop" by listening to his nice pastor at church. And I got the nice surprise of finally, after seeing bits and pieces so many times, of watching the entirety of "Notting Hill." Put me in a great mood, it did.

"Jesus of Nazareth" is on the History Channel and that will be my church service today...Michael York as John the Baptist and Robert Powell as Jesus. At the moment, John the Baptist is baptizing Jesus, and he feels unequal to the task. Jesus says, "We must fulfil all righteousness." And then a dove soars heavenward. John says he can hear the word of God, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

So Happy Easter, all. It's not about death or taxes. It's about eternal life. And I rarely talk about such things because I'm so sure of the Lamb of God. Who has risen.