Anticipating the recent dual-holiday weekend at our last writing session, we asked our writers inside to recall favorite childhood memories, and to reflect on how their understanding of the holiday has deepened or changed in adulthood. One women writes:

I was too young to understand the value of Easter. As a child you believe that your family will always be there. The people that I refer to as my grandparents were actually my step-grandparents, my stepmother’s parents. My stepmother couldn’t have children and she had no siblings. But this was my family; they raised me and made every holiday special and unique. My stepmother was the best mother anyone could ask for, in spite of my shortcomings as a daughter.

With my grandparents in heaven and my parents in Florida, we do not spend any more holidays like we used to. However, without missing a beat, my stepmother – my mom in the truest sense of the word – sends me a card for every holiday, from Christmas to St. Patrick’s Day. It brings back all the wonderful memories. Memories locked in my heart that cannot be confined by these walls that confine my body.

RP