just like a maze...

(me, about 8 years old, at my father's cabin, Greenwood Lake, NJ)

When so often these days I think about the impact I have on the lives of those who depend on me

I can somehow forget about the impact I have on the lives of those I once depended on.

I didn't want to hunt for Easter eggs yesterday.

I wanted to sit with a glass of wine and I wanted to take that deep breath I'd been reminding myself to get around to taking all day.

But there it was, the third basket, waiting to be filled with found eggs; one for him, one for her and one for me.

Wine in a paper cup is just fine.  

"You used to run", he pointed out.  "If Curt was here, you'd run"...  

"Can you give me a hint?", I asked.  "Am I warm?".  

"No", he said, "getting colder".  

I am, I thought to myself.

Then I took that breath I'd meant to take earlier and I found my eggs and in the last of them, a pale, plastic, pink one, cut like a diamond, carefully folded, was a hundred dollar bill.

Another deep breath.

...And I felt as if I won the lottery... because I have you see... my father loves me.

I'm 47 years old, reluctantly hunting for Easter eggs and the thing to look for here, the thing to find is this...

even when I'm stressed and tired, taxed and worried about my own children, moving from one house to a new one, juggling the million details of my days ahead and trying to understand the year behind.   Even when it's my own daughter's Birthday and the holiest of holy days and I'm weary, in need of wine in a paper cup, when I don't feel like hunting for Easter eggs, when my dogs are waiting for me at home, when I am everything I don't want to be and not much I hoped for, I am still someone's little girl.  ... And that someone is looking to me to show them that they did alright in their own life.

Happy Easter 2012.   I love you Daddy.