Easter 2017 and Bow

It is turning out to be a rather gloomy Easter outside, with stormy weather and rain and skies so dark that there is  very little light in the inner pens. But before it started raining, we managed to have some of those warm, fuzzy moments that come from good intentions and mutual affection and respect.

I had begun to feel that maybe we had outgrown Easter egg hunts and candy eggs, considering that Sword is seventeen and Bow is fifteen. I was ready to put aside those traditions, at least until there are grandchildren.

But Sword surprised me this morning with a generous Easter gift. She paid for all the loot with her hard-earned money, and she made the pastel-themed basket herself.

I know, the lighting isn't good, but it's so dark in here today, even with the light on. Bow saw the gift that I got, and he saw that I had also gotten an Easter egg for him, and he knew at once that it was Easter. I was thinking of just giving him the candy-filled egg as a part of his breakfast, but after finishing his grapes and cereal, he spelled., "תני לי לצאת." "Let me go out."

That surprised me, because the egg was displayed on his breakfast table, and he hadn't asked for it. "You just want to go out?"

But then he spelled, "תני לי לצאת. תני לי ביצה." "Let me go out. Give me an egg."

So I understood that he wanted to do what we do every year. I pretend to hide eggs outside, and then he goes out and finds them. Admittedly, it's not much of an Easter egg hunt with just one egg, but I went out and placed the egg in plain view in a high spot in the outer pen. Then I let Bow go out there to find it, and he was perfectly happy to do so. He was excited and cheerful as he went through the maze of corridors to get there.

Finding the egg and retrieving it was no problem at all. But opening it was a completely different matter.

You can see how Bow asks for help in the video. First he motions at me with his left hand while holding the egg in his right. Then he reaches out with his right hand and gives me the egg. I've got to say that removing the shrink wrap with no tools except my keys was not easy. But even after I did that and handed the egg back to Bow, and he had taken it to a different spot to open, he still needed help.

Those eggs are not designed to be opened without serious effort!

Very soon after he had finished eating all the sweet tarts, Bow asked to come in again. It had started sprinkling outside, and very soon after that the sky grew dark, and it began to rain in earnest. So Bow asked for his blanket, and now he is taking a nap.

A Chilly Springtime

Everything is in bloom now, but it has been very cold out lately, especially in the mornings. Yesterday morning, Bow asked to go out, then immediately changed his mind.

Although the mornings are chilly, many of the afternoons are nice and warm. Both Bow and the dogs seem to enjoy those times out of doors.

Sometimes I am in with Bow, looking out at the dogs, and sometimes I am out with the dogs, looking in on Bow.

We did not have an Easter egg hunt this year. Bow is fourteen and too mature for that. But he did get some Easter treats, in moderation.

He tore the little box of Easter dots open with his mouth, then ate them one by one, a dreamy look on his face.

Sometimes Bow asks to be left alone. But he never words it that way. Yesterday after lunch, he kept motioning for me to go out to the front yard, taking my key and pointing at the door, but when I asked him what he wanted, he spelled out: "תנסי לצלם פרחים" -- "Try to take pictures of flowers." There was something decidedly condescending in the way he worded that. But I complied.

The pear blossoms yesterday

Bow is not interested in pictures of flowers. But he knows that I am. So there's theory of mind for you in practice. And, yes, there are times when a fourteen year old needs to be alone. I do understand.

The Time of Daffodils and Religious Tracts

It's that time of year. The single daffodil that survived the fire has bloomed. It seems a little lonely, but we are lucky to have it. Nature preserves hardy survivors even in the face of destruction.

It is possible to mark the seasons by the things that happen every year around this time. But sometimes Bow and I are taken off guard, even though in retrospect we realize that what just happened was perfectly predictable.

I thought the elephants were a nice touch

A little while ago, we got our annual visit from the local Jehovah's Witnesses. They are always very polite, and I am also very polite, but it bothers Bow that people just show up unannounced. So after they are gone, I  share the tract they leave with Bow and let him know they came by just to give it to us.

Bow looking at the invitation/tract

Bow was not really all that interested this year, merely glancing at the invitation to their Easter event.

I like how they try to modernize their message so that it sounds like a benefits package: "You will hear an explanation of how his death can benefit you and your family." Bow, however, by now is quite unimpressed with all these promises. I think maybe if they had invited us to an event where we get to hurl rocks at trees he would have been more excited.

Celebrating Easter

Since both my kids are too old for an Easter egg hunt, I went to that old standby this morning: the chocolate bunny. She got one wrapped in pink foil, and his was wrapped in blue.

Instead of making Bow search for hidden eggs, his enrichment activity was unwrapping the bunny, which can be frustrating to a full grown human adult.

Bow is very smart, and, while he used his mouth to unwrap the foil, he did not chew on any part of it. It came out perfectly formed.

He discarded the foil entirely intact and proceeded to eat the chocolate with dainty appreciation.

Bow eats chocolate very slowly.

This was a solid chocolate bunny, not one of those hollow models you sometimes see. It was manufactured by Zachary Confections of Frankfort, Indiana.

You can see how carefully Bow unwrapped the bunny

Having chocolate bunnies for Easter is a tradition in my family of origin since 1970.

I don't remember ever having been on an Easter egg hunt as a small child. I think we went straight from Israel's passover to chocolate bunnies for the whole family as a celebration in the United States. For a fictional account of the culture shock, you can read my short story, The Punky-Wunkies. It's in two parts, and here is the second one: Punky Wunkies, Part Two. 

My mother says that when she was growing up, foil wrappers from chocolates were saved by the children in her town as valuable and traded with others, to see who would have the most complete collection. It's a shame that today most people just throw away the wrappers, no matter how beautiful they are. Abundance breeds contempt.

You may be wondering how I could allow Bow to eat something quite so bad for him as a chocolate bunny. Here are the nutritional facts about this treat:

It's really not as bad as you would think. On the plus side, there are 16 grams of fat. On the minus side, there are 34 grams of carbohydrates. (Protein is negligible.) That makes it seem as if there are more than twice as many units of carbohydrates as of fat, which would be bad for purposes of preventing obesity. However, there are more than twice as many calories in fat as in carbohydrates, so when all is said and done, it's nearly an equal distribution: 136 calories from carbohydrates and 144 calories from fat. This is not a low carb food, but it's not high carb, either. Not like fruit!

Compare this to the nutritional content of an average raw apple:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1809/2

The apple has only two calories from fat in it, as compared to 63 calories from carbs, so it is a high carb food. Of those carbs, only twelve are from dietary fiber. So the leaves 51 calories of carbs that are actually going to be used as fuel. The apple is less filling than the chocolate, contains fewer calories, but almost all of those calories are carbs.  When Bow eats several apples to get full during the day, he will actually end up with more carbs than he would have if he were on a diet of chocolate bunnies. Since carbs are easier to digest, they will more readily store as fat, if he does not burn them off immediately.

Fortunately for Bow, he does not have an obesity problem. He has a high metabolism and does burn off all those carbs from fruit every day. And I don't give him chocolate except for special occasions. But you can see that it's not as harmful as you might suppose, compared to his daily fare of apples, grapes and bananas.

I have seen chimpanzees at the zoo who probably never got chocolate even  once in their life and eat a high carb diet approved by the experts, and they are obese!

We try to balance nutrition with fun here, and Bow is doing just fine.

Time Goes By

Yesterday, I spotted the first open peach blossom in my orchard.

This does not necessarily mean that there will be peaches. We will just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, we got a postcard in the mail from one of the local churches inviting us to attend their Easter service.

Bow was intrigued by the illustration on the front of the card.

He pointed to the most salient part of the illustration, the little boy horrified at the prospect of attending a long church service.

At our house, we have only ever had the fun part of the Easter holiday, namely the Easter egg hunt.

But Bow is thirteen now, and I am beginning to suspect this is too old for a hunt, especially in the limited confines of the outer pen.

Thinking about this. I dragged out an old album to look at pictures of past Easter egg hunts in the great outdoors. Bow got very excited when he saw me bring in the scrapbook, and he insisted he wanted to look at the pictures, too.

He flipped through the pages very carefully.

He did not concentrate solely on the Easter photos, but went over the entire scrapbook several times.

He looked at photos of himself and Sword when they were younger. But he also paused and examined pictures of other people, some of whom he has not seen in a long time. And, of course, there was the Easter egg hunt. "Bow are you done?" I asked him, but he kept on flipping.

I know better than to try to snatch something away from Bow when he is not done with it, so when it was clear that he wanted to leaf through the scrapbook much longer than I had the patience for, having seen all the photos several times already, I left him alone on his side of the pen, while I went to work on the computer. When Bow was done, and this took about fifteen minutes, he clapped his hands together, as if in applause, and I went back in to get the album.

We can't relive an old memory by reenacting it. But sometimes it's nice to look at old photos and remember the good times.

 Time goes by, but the memories remain.