Chapter Sixteen: The Fake Easter

“I am thinking the synagogue, seriously.”

“I am pretty sure the practice of Judaism does not support Easter. If it did, the followers of this faith would not be Jewish.”

“Exactly.”

Susie and I are plotting our first Fake Easter, i.e. our first holiday without our children. Both of us will be experiencing this divorce reality for the first time and we have vowed to spend the day together while attempting to be as creative and positive about it as possible.

I am lobbying that we spend our Easter Sunday at a temple somewhere chanting and meditating in a painful Yoga pose. I am thinking if I can just get my ankles behind my head I might be able to distract myself from this sucky dimension of divorce. Susie is 100% on board and has already begun stretching every night in preparation. “I can, I can put my toe to my nose. I am almost there!” (The mere visual of her attempting this physical feat while on her cell phone is almost enough to cure me of my whining about the whole Easter deal. What a nut!)

The weekend prior, I had what I referred to as “The Real Easter” with my children.

The Easter bunny came a week early, my daughters donned their pastel dresses, and we treated Granny (my Mom) to an all you can eat Sunday buffet after church at Granite City. My kids thought it was great and seem to honestly view the “double holiday” as a perk and benefit to having divorced parents. (At least, that is the cunning lie I tell myself. And I am not a very good liar so it isn’t working all that well.)

The truth is that holidays are the staple of pain when it comes to divorce. And since I don’t want to be a pain hog, I fully acknowledge that my children will bear the brunt of this division. For the rest of their childhood they will celebrate two of everything. All I can do is acknowledge the burden they will bear because of a decision they had nothing to do with while my ex-husband and I work together to do everything we can to minimize their trauma.

And shower them with far too many chocolate bunnies.

And so next Sunday Susie and I will not be sitting in the church we always sat in on Easter. It will be too hard and only serve as a reminder of how different, scary, and even lonely our new independence may be at times.

Instead, we will be struggling to twist ourselves into pretzels at a temple somewhere, giggling instead of chanting, and making it through our first Fake Easter in the best possible way:

Together.