Thursday, April 8, 2010

Easter and the art of sharing joy and sorrow..............


It is not often that we rent the house to a family as a whole, but it happened this easter. I was contacted months ago by a lovely lady wanting to organise a surprise for her mother's 70th Birthday.
As usual this means lots of hard work and organisation and last week I was running around like a mad hatter to finalise everything.
First the children and grandchildren arrived on the gray saturday afternoon and then we had to hide the cars etc as this was a surprise. The whole family (11) hid in the bathroom when the granparents arrived.
What joy on the faces!! Laughter and and........
Saturday night I did a big meal with bobotie and quails and cheese and and with lots of frills and fancies and Pascal from our local café made 2 divine cakes.
On Sunday night instead of the normal 'Easter Lamb' I made them a very perfumed Lamb Curry with Basmati rice and my chocolat/chesnut hearts decorated with porcupine quills. 
Always a winner.

Monday they all lunched at the local café and monday night the parent's friends arrived for another 2 days of fiesta!
But the thing that really made this weekend so intense is that it is the first time this family got together after a very big drama in which they lost 2 small girls in a fire at the grandparents home. As the father of the girls cannot face going back there, they reunited here. The wonderful thing is that this couple who lost their children, faced their pain, and now have a beautiful baby boy. Obviously the center of attraction for all around! 
Being so close to everyone, we totally shared in their pain and in their joy of getting together again. 
And of course wonderful things happens in the kitchen. The sharing of all their stories whilst I'm behind the pots cooking away!
So intense!
And that is what makes life so incredible. 
Sharing sorrow and joy.
Life is about sharing
I am so privileged to share this with you
Bisous
Lynn

3 comments:

Neeta said...

Thanks for sharing this, you are a beautiful storyteller Lynn.....

baukje said...

A very emotional story , thanks for sharing this.

cathy said...

Thank you Lynnie for a very tender story.. you are a master teller! x