Easter And New Beginnings

Today was even more beautiful, and a bit warmer, than yesterday.  I was tempted to go on another bike ride.  However, I am still not at the point of riding on consecutive days--or, at least, riding on the day after taking a ride of more than two hours or so.


It's not that I felt tired.  Rather, today I've  felt a bit  sore around my new organs, as I did after the ride I took a couple of weeks ago.  Today I didn't feel quite as sore and, in fact, as I'm writing, I don't feel it at all.  Still, I don't want to take any chances.  I don't want this girl to be interrupted!


Actually, I took a very short ride to Astoria Park, where young people as well as families who were just coming from church basked in the sun.  The study in contrasts was interesting:  the young hipsters or wannabes, who included a young woman whose arms were covered with tatoos, alongside little girls and their mothers in frilly pastel dresses and little boys who wore smaller versions of their fathers' suits.  


Later in the afternoon I went to Millie's house for dinner.  Her daughter, Lisa, has a new boyfriend.  (It's kind of strange to call someone someone's boyfriend or girlfriend when he or she is old enough to have kids who have boyfriends and girlfriends.  Neither Lisa nor the boyfriend have kids, though.)  Actually, they've been together for a few months, but this is the first time I've seen him at a family function. Stephanie, Millie's other daughter, was also there with her kids.  One of them is certainly old enough to have a boyfriend or girlfriend but doesn't seem interested.  She's very smart and attractive, so her lack of interest isn't a way of pre-empting  a lack of interest from others.  I think that she realizes, on some level, that most of the boys around her age that she sees every day are not on her level of awareness and are therefore not worth her time.  


It's hard for me to believe that when I first met her, she was just starting the third grade and her brother wasn't even in school yet.  It's odd--and a little sad--to see a friend's kid grow up in ways that I didn't have the opportunity to see in my nephews and nieces grow.  


Speaking of people whom you've seen growing:  Millie's friend, Cahterine, was also there.  She and Millie have known each other since they were four years old!  They have never lived more than a neighborhood or two apart from each other, and it's hard to imagine that they ever would.  


Most years, they've celebrated Easter together.  And that they did today as well.    Just as they probably won't live in different cities, let alone states or countries, it's hard to see that they would ever spend Easter away from each other.  


Sometimes I wish my life would have permitted me the opportunity to have such long-term friendships, just as I also wish, sometimes, that I could have lived my whole life as female. However, it seems that Easter is about rebirths or other new beginnings.  Sometimes they're scary because they're new and I judge myself for, in essence, starting my life in middle age.  On the other hand, new beginnings are also exhilarating.  And that is what this season is about, or at least symbolizes.