The Easter Miracle

Newsletter 2024-04-01

The primary miracle of Easter will always be Jesus rising from the dead, but a secondary one this year was my entire family getting together. Siblings from four different states gathered in the same place on the same day, marking the first time we’d reached our full head count in two years. Predictably, the result was violence. There’s a reason we don’t reunite more often.

The wild card was my brother Harry. Previously, he was a pilot in the Air Force. His availability around holidays was subject to the whims of the US military and the bad intentions of our enemies. I’m not saying he single-handedly kept America safe, but there were multiple terrorist groups that didn’t make a resurgence until he left the service. He’s now training to be a pilot for one of the major civilian airlines. The next time you fly, the guy in the cockpit could be related to me. I understand if you take the train from now on. That’s how I’ll be traveling. One of the perks of Harry’s new gig is that he and his family can fly for free. He wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but, without consulting any of us, he decided to test it out. The rest of the family had agreed on a date to assemble for Easter without checking with him because we assumed that, like usual, he couldn’t make it. Then, when we were sharing our expected arrival times, he chimed in that he’d be there in the early afternoon. Pandemonium ensued.

Had we known Harry was coming, we would have picked a different date, not to avoid him (although that would have been pretty funny), but to make his trip easier. As a pilot, he gets to fly for free with his wife and two kids, but on standby. That means he can only board if there aren’t enough paying customers, which he’ll never know until the last possible moment. Harry needed four empty seats on planes overbooked for a holiday weekend. I don’t think of Easter as being a big time for travel, but apparently other people take their family egg hunts as seriously as I do. Harry tried to fly in on Friday, but he could only get two seats. He refused to split up his family. Sending your wife alone with a toddler is a good way to guarantee a divorce. Also, they had to rent a car when they landed to drive from Indianapolis to Illinois, so the logistics wouldn’t have worked out if they arrived on two different days. Instead, they rolled the dice that they’d all be able to travel together on Saturday. The rest of us were skeptical they’d show up at all.

To our surprise, Harry’s plan worked. That one sentence could summarize his entire life. His schemes, no matter how out-of-the-blue or poorly thought out, land every time. It happened when he joined the Air Force, when he left the Air Force to be an airline pilot, and when he decided at the last minute to exploit his new airline gig to fly home for Easter. Neither luck nor preparation can properly explain his track record. It comes down to sheer stubbornness. You don’t need a plan B when you have an unrelenting death grip on plan A. Harry arrived in Indianapolis exactly when he said he would. The only delay was in renting a car. He turned down my offer to pick him up and insisted on getting his own vehicle. Naturally, the rental place jerked him around. It’s an industry whose entire business model is based on the fact that you don’t have other options. You can either deal with the worst customer service on the planet or walk. It didn’t occur to me until afterward that I could have simply given Harry one of my minivans for the duration of his stay. I sometimes forget how incredibly blessed I am to own two of the greatest vehicles on the planet. We’ll work out the kinks next time. His plots never fail, so I’m sure he’ll be back.

As excited as we were to have Harry at Easter, he was still late to the party. He didn’t arrive until day two. Day one, which was Friday, was a more subdued affair. I was the first to arrive with my four girls. Lola had to work, as always. My brother Mitchell got there next from Missouri with his wife and three kids, followed shortly thereafter by my sister Ella with her two. After that was my brother Arthur, who had to walk down from a whole two houses away. He arrived exhausted after his harrowing journey. It’s a shame there were no rest stops along the way. He didn’t have the shortest trip of the day, though. That honor went to my brother Nathaniel, who still lives at home. He was two rooms away, yet he was the last of the first day arrivals. Teenage boys have a special level of antisocialness that’s impervious to any form of grace or tact. I wanted to make fun of him, but my mom said the rest of us were all the same way at his age. The difference is there were more of us in the house at the time, so we were antisocial together. Being an introverted misanthrope is more fun in a group. 

I brought two bags of board games, as always, but we didn’t play any. My children were so disappointed in me. Games are a social lubricant necessary only when the conversation dies down. We had enough things to talk about to keep us gabbing late into the night, and by late, I mean 11 p.m.. Most of us are in our thirties now. It gets late a lot earlier than it used to. When my mom went to bed, that was our signal to shut down things for the evening. As always, driving home at that hour was terrible, but it was better than packing for an overnight trip and sleeping in a strange bed. I woke up in my own room on my own mattress ready to take on the world. Not really. I’m thirty-eight, so everything hurt. It was time for day two.

Lola and I drove back to my parents’ house with all our kids that morning. We had our big Easter feast for lunch. Everyone but Harry’s family was there by then, and we convinced my parents he wasn’t worth the wait. Siblings are siblings, no matter how old they are. In true Easter tradition, my dad grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. The best way to honor the resurrection of our Lord and savior is with propane and propane accessories. Despite our best efforts, we failed to finish everything, so there were plenty of leftovers when Harry and his crew showed up shortly after lunch. We handed him a beer and a microwaved burger, then rushed everyone outside for a group photo. It was best to take the picture before we were all covered in dirt and blood. In anticipation of the inevitable (and unbearable) family photo op, I brought a tripod with a Bluetooth remote. I bragged to everyone about how easy it would make our lives. Then I pulled it out and realized I forgot the phone holder for the top. Without it, the tripod was a useless stick. Luckily, Harry’s wife, Karen, had the exact part I needed on her own, much smaller tripod. I combined the two and we were back in business. I assembled everyone in front of my parents’ house and quickly snapped off fifty pictures. I didn’t look at any of them. I simply sent them en masse in our family’s Facebook Messenger thread so that everyone could pick the one where they look the best. If you know any of us in real life, you’ll see various, slightly different versions of this image popping up in your Facebook news feed this week. I look terrible in all of them. Next time, I’ll duck.

With the historical record preserved, it was time for eggs. We started with the kids. There are so many these days that my parents ran out of individual colors to assign to each one. Actually, the rainbow ran out. The grandkids exceeded the available options in the visible light spectrum. Instead, each kid was given a number that was written on one set of eggs. With the rules explained, my mom unleashed the children. My two youngest, Lucy and Waffle, quickly hoovered up their allotment. As the biggest of the little kids, they reigned supreme. Not that finishing faster helped them. Everyone got the same number of eggs because the communists won. Harry’s kids had the most fun. His toddler, who could barely walk, couldn’t keep his eggs in the basket. Every time one fell out, he thought it was a new egg, which he got to collect all over again. It was an infinite Easter egg hunt. The kid was in heaven. 

Finally, it was time for the adults. This year, my thirteen-year-old, Betsy, and eleven-year-old, Mae, joined us for the fight. Kids dream of the day when they are worthy of the money hunt. My parents filled each egg with one, two, or three singles. There was more than two hundred dollars in small bills up for grabs. The rules were simple. You had to carry the eggs one at a time on a metal serving spoon. The eggs weren’t safe until they made it back to your bag in the flower bed. Before that, anything could happen. For an added challenge, Mitchell declared that the men of the family had to have a beer in one hand the whole time. The guys were happy to oblige. I handed my mom my phone to document the event for posterity. She said, “Go,” and we went to war. 

I’m too old to shuttle run anywhere. Instead, I slowly plodded along, carefully scooping up each egg and counting on my superior size to keep me safe. It was the brontosaurus defense. Betsy and Mae, by contrast, ran as hard as they could. I’m not sure what Lola did. She’s small enough that I lost track of her in the fray. For the most part, my brothers and I avoided combat. We’ve learned over the years that the best strategy is to go for the uncontested eggs first and reserve direct confrontation for near the end. When I attempted to scoop up my final egg, Mitchell shoved me hard from behind. I nearly impaled my face on the picket fence. I let that egg go. My sister Sasha’s boyfriend dove in behind me but stepped on the egg, crushing it. Mitchell scooped up the loose bills and put them in his bag. When the dust settled, Lola and I each had nine dollars. Betsy had seventeen, and Mae came away with an astounding nineteen, winning Easter. Not bad for her rookie performance. I don’t have to be the fastest or the strongest guy in the hunt anymore. I just need a lot of minions. It goes to show that, if you wait long enough, kids eventually pay for themselves. Surely the combined thirty-six dollars Betsy and Mae collected will offset all the other expenses in their lives. How much does it cost to go to college?

You’ll have to take my word for it on how the adult Easter egg hunt went. There’s not much visual evidence. Despite having my camera, my mom thought she was taking a video instead of pictures. She snapped the capture button exactly once. All we have to remember the event by is this blurry image of Betsy’s shins. Well, that and this newsletter. Being the family historian is a heavy burden, especially since I have to spend so much time lying to make myself look good. I hate being creative.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time. 

James