I can always easily recall memories of holidays alongside my family. Easter was particularly special. At five years old, it meant the Easter Bunny was coming and I had a basket full of toys to unwrap and a big chocolate bunny my mom would only let me nibble at over the course of a couple weeks. At 10 years old, it meant getting to go over to my Nana’s house, seeing all my family together - a rare event - and trying to beat all my cousins at finding the easter eggs with the most amount of money in them. I might’ve even been lucky that year and found the golden egg with a $20 bill. Perhaps this is when Easter started to become more about the food. Everyone would bring a dish over potluck style and we would have a big feast and then all go home bellies full and cravings satisfied after finally being able to indulge in the items we gave up for Lent that, for most of us, was food related and never seemed to fully give up for the full forty days. At 16 years old, it meant knowing it was going to be the last Easter with all of my family together. My grandma was leaving us soon after her second battle with cancer. She was the glue that kept all the cousins, aunts, and siblings together for these occasions. The magic of the holiday was gone along with the Easter Bunny that stopped coming to visit. We were all too old for Easter eggs, and so we looked forward to the holiday by dressing nicely and eating, once again, a potluck of yummy foods. At 18, my mom started making our own traditions. Made-to-order omelets and her homemade strawberry cream cheese crepes for brunch and always a big spiraled ham with gnocchi and rigatoni smothered in our family’s gravy (Italian tomato and meat sauce). Funny enough, we stopped going to Easter services, but we seemed to always be very aware of the religious importance of the day more-so than in the past. Likely due to the fact we were missing a loved one. At 20, I was away in college wondering if Easter was important enough to make the 4 hour drive back home to spend with my parents and brother. I always seemed to agree it was, and it always came down to me asking myself  “what will I eat on Easter if I spend it alone” -  proof my mom did a good job making new traditions for Easter for us that made it vital we spend it together over the same crepes, the same ham, and the same Sunday gravy. 

At 26, I am alone. I live in the city I dreamed of all my life, although I’m staring out my window into the side streets of Bushwick, about 30 minutes outside the city. Easter feels different this year, and for whatever reason, it became the first year in almost ten years I partook in Ash Wednesday. I decided not to go home and deal with the drama at the airports with everyone leaving to spend the holiday with their families, however it seemed like no one was leaving this year. I had made a couple of friends, one of them did not celebrate Easter and the other, like me, decided not to return home this year. In order to make the day feel unlike any other Sunday and keep the traditions my mom worked hard to manage alive in my new environment, I decided to invite those I knew over to my small apartment and eat a nice brunch. We gathered humbly over my coffee table seated on floor pillows, but no one seemed to notice because I had managed to make a small feast that was laid out in front of us like something I would have seen at my old family potlucks. I made a little bit of everything, (most) of it good. We had my own version of crepes to feel like I was keeping in touch with my mom’s Easter tradition, fish, small breads with various toppings, olive oil cake, zucchini pie - safe to say I survived my first holiday on my own. I was glad I invited my friends over and decided that spending any holiday alone was never going to be the case. If I stayed back in the city again, I would ask those staying behind to come over and enjoy some sort of meal, always emphasizing that they do not get their tastebud hopes too high. But this thought once again drove me back to the connection I was feeling towards the holiday this year and why it felt so different. The feeling that the traditions might be altered, the people I’d see that day would be different, there would be no Sunday gravy and big spiraled ham, made it feel like I was somehow not celebrating Easter “right”, and so I got my ashes in a thick cross on my forehead that Ash Wednesday, I tried to keep in mind the meaning of the holiday throughout the month, and did my best to keep the promises I made to myself for Lent. But it wasn’t until I sat gathered around the table with friends that I realized new traditions were always going to have to be made, people were going to enter and exit out of our lives, but the sole reason we gather in the first place will always be the constant and the most important, so we should always gather on these special occasions no matter where, with who, or what is on our plate.