Forty-two miles due north of my home, Ellen Carnie’s Honker Springs Farm quietly sits, waiting for each return.  Like Brigadoon, Ellen’s spread rarely changes, though old trees fall and seasons wax and wane.  As I drive north, I lose the perennial tension.  Lightness begins to rise in my heart. My mind quiets.

This Easter, I arrive at five in the afternoon on Holy Saturday, a recovering Catholic bound nonetheless for Easter Sunday service at the Stony Point Presbyterian Church.  Ellen and her gentleman caller Jerry Stewart have tarried at a friend’s place.  I lounge on the deck, invited to enter by Ellen’s son via message from his home down the hill but nervous about by-passing the watchful Lab.  I assure Keith that I’m fine, I have a book, I’ll touch base if it gets cold.  A few seconds pass before he answers:  Come on down here if you want, wait for Mom here.  I’m in the country, I recall:  Even someone who barely knows me will open their home for my comfort.

I content myself with breathing the soft spring air coming to me from across the pasture.  I watch the steady climb of a pick-up over the rise.  Its driver does something to a gate and then disappears around the corner of an out-building before climbing back into the cab and reversing his course.  As the sound of the engine recedes and falls still, I watch a bird settle on a blossom-laden redbud.  In a few minutes, Ellen and Jerry arrive; we hug and then carry my bags into the house.  I unearth the hostess gift which I bought at World’s Window and Ellen sheds a tender tear.  Then we open a bottle of wine and start fixing dinner.  I feel a sense of calmness that comes from being somewhere that I am welcomed without reservation.

On Sunday, we eat a heavy breakfast in the church basement.  The ladies of the congregation will not let me help.  I’ve been to services enough times to be recognized but not often enough to lose my visitor status.  I accept the difference.  After brunch, the kids have an Easter egg hunt and then we go upstairs for the Sunday service.  I nearly get thrown out of the place with Ellen’s two-year-old; Owen has found the Minion game on my Droid tablet. I’ve got the sound off on the machine but Owen starts telling me about the pictures and the minister casts a baleful eye in my direction.  Ellen smiles and Owen giggles.  I content myself with making a Japanese crane from the program, which fascinates the boy and I feel vindicated.

At the afternoon meal at Ellen’s son and daughter-in-law’s home, eighteen people make a sizable dent in an enormous amount of food.  We lounge around Keith and Jessica’s beautiful living space, with its striking, high ceilings and gorgeous welded railings.  Keith takes me into the gigantic workshop to show me a 1978 motorcycle which he has completely rebuilt.  I marvel over the compact frame and the lustrous lace-stencil paint work.  I think to myself, this is the first conversation I’ve had with Keith since I met Ellen, as he shows me the bike he actually rides and a little motorized vehicle which he’s built for his sons, for when they’re older.  The place smells like engine oil and happy hours.

Then it is time for me to leave — for Ellen and Jerry to drive me back to the city.  I’m leaving my Saturn to have body work done by Ellen’s neighbor, since I’ve been gifted with my favorite curmudgeon’s Prius.  Ellen’s granddaughter Elizabeth comes down at her grandmother’s calling to thank me for the Easter candy.  First she and then Owen throw their arms around me and my heart melts.

Just before I get out of Jerry’s truck in my own drive-way, Ellen asks me if I want some hardboiled eggs.  She passes them over the seat and I gently drop them into a pocket of my bag.  I’ll give you the one that says “I love SheShe”, Ellen tells me, love for her grandchildren lacing her words.  They call her “SheShe”; and they do indeed adore her.

When I am alone in the silence of my living room, I realize that I have gone all day without contemplating anything which plagues me.  None of the sorrows which weigh heavy on my normal days seem insurmountable after Easter at Carnie’s Honker Springs Farm.  I look around me: at the little piles of my belongings dumped on the table after their hasty removal from the Saturn; at the shoes under the coffee table where I shed them in exhaustion one recent weary workday; at the dishes that the house-sitter left in the sink and the ones which I left on the counter.  I have to attend to all of it.  But before I do, I sit in my rocker and eat a hard-boiled egg, after carefully peeling away its blue-dyed shell.