Good Friday Recollections

My earliest memory of Easter is actually a Good Friday memory. My mother and I were outside by the backyard clothesline. She had done a wash earlier in the day and by now the bed sheets were dry and rippling rather vigorously in the wind. We were there to rescue all the clothes off the line before the raindrops would hit. My job was to hold the clothespin bag and collect all the clothespins.

Where we were standing, and all the way to the south and southeast, all was gloriously sunny. Jonquils nodded their reflections of the deepest yellows. No leaves filled out the trees yet, and the sunlight that filtered though the branches lit up the greenest grass of the year. But in the rest of the sky, the dark clouds of an impending thunderstorm were building.

I remember mom commenting that it was almost 3 o'clock in the afternoon and a storm was coming, much like the storm that came the afternoon Jesus died on the cross. That was a very poignant moment that seemed bigger than life. Looking one direction, the world seemed fully peaceful and ready to bloom into new spring life. But turn around—and it seemed all the forces of the universe were assembling in the heavens and about to release their fury.

No doubt, extra ions were in the atmosphere. I remember an electrifying clarity of life and death vying across time and space. It was profound.