For as long as I can remember, I have been away from home over the Easter weekend.  It is normally beach walks, sea air, and pink gins by no later than eleven o’clock in the morning, lots of lemon, plenty of ice.  However, this year, with Easter falling at an awkward time in terms of the school calendar I now find myself bound by, my newly manicured feet were held firmly in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg.

What is interesting about this holiday is that it is so often perceived as just a lovely few days away from the hustle and bustle of our ordinary lives, and yet, as I discovered yesterday, which was Easter Sunday, it is so much more than that.  Given that I was locally based, when my mum said she would meet me at church for the special Easter service, I knew I could run, but there was no way I could hide, so off I went obediently, and in fairly good spirits.

We tend to get to the end of the year and madly run around making our New Year’s Resolutions – this is something I am particularly good at as it involves making a list, and being a secretary at heart, lists and I like each other very much. 

And so it was particularly of interest to me yesterday morning, that Easter is more about new beginnings than the 1^st of January is.  I won’t go into the biblical analogy that was given, but if you think about it, it is indeed about new starts, new clean (Easter) eggs waiting to develop into brand new chicks, and the start of fresh things – in particular, a chance to remember our hopes, our wishes, our dreams.

Of course, this news was a huge relief to me, because if I look at my list of resolutions I diligently drew up at the beach in December, so far, not too much has been accomplished.  So now, this is like “take two” – a chance to start again, and try again, and hope again.

I have been criticised in the past, probably quite rightly, for tending to follow the adage “you get one bite of the cherry” – often quite anti second chances.  Yesterday morning, I thought to myself how wrong this actually is.  If the universal calendar gives us a second chance, are we not also supposed to pick a leaf off our autumn trees, and give each other, and ourselves, another try too?

After much thought, many Easter eggs, and a pink gin or four – I think the time has arrived to forget the Christmas tinsel, and look forward to all those things we thought had tarnished, but in fact, are shiny, bright, and new.