Good Friday

I've always loved Easter. To me, it is the holiest of all Christian holidays.

Yesterday my daughter finished her radioactive iodine treatments for Grave's Disease. She is confined to her bedroom for the next 4 days. She is emitting beta particles (I think that's right) and that's not a good thing. She has to flush the toilet twice after she uses it. And she has to throw away her underwear a couple of times a day. She is on a special diet with absolutely no sodium. She is allowed to eat chicken, beef, or pork with no seasoning except pepper. She can have fresh vegetables or fruit (no canned stuff), 1 piece of bread and 1 cup of milk a day. She can drink tea, water, and KoolAid if it doesn't contain red dye 40. That's all she's allowed. She's basically living on bananas and baked potatoes with pepper. She says the diet is the hardest thing she's ever done.

Areas of the North are covered in snow. I remember a huge snow in April when I was in high school. We had no power for over 5 days. My mom cooked over a fire in the fireplace. There was plenty of food because we had to use stuff in the freezer before it ruined. In those days our freezer was filled with good things from the garden, as well as beef we raised and grain fed during the summer. All four of us kids slept in the floor near the fire and my parents slept on a couch. At the time, I didn't realize I was living something that would later become a precious memory.