Jen's Column / Easter weekend

I'm supposed to be writing this column on the way home from "up north" — my laptop balancing on my knees in our silver Town & Country as my husband drives and my boys munch on Goldfish and watch Shrek in the back seat.

I'm supposed to be writing about spending Easter weekend at our cabin near Itasca State Park — about how 15 of us crowded into our two-bedroom cabin for three days, sleeping in four beds, an air mattress and three 1970s-era couches.

I was going to dazzle you with stories about how we made our entire Easter dinner — including two hams — in crock-pots, since we have no oven there. How we kept the milk and butter in the snow bank outside the front door, a more reliable location than our ancient refrigerator. How we washed our dishes and our faces in a roasting pan filled with water we hauled from Rochester — because we've also no running water at the cabin this time of year.

I couldn't have resisted telling how nine little cousins who haven't seen each other since October combed the woods on an acre-wide egg hunt, the pink, yellow and blue Easter eggs hidden amid the white snow and the white pines, in the fire pit and alongside (but not in) the outhouse. How the kids played outside until the bottom of their snow pants dripped with muddy water and caked dirt — and how we washed them in the snow and hung them from the log beams over the woodstove to dry.

I knew how the weekend would play out even before we left. Counting my chickens before they hatch, you might say. And, of course, we know how that ends.

We left for the cabin early Friday morning, our van packed with sleds and coolers and shovels and blankets and boots and enough food to feed 15 people for far more than three days. And then we drove 35-miles-an-hour to Cannon Falls, made a U-turn at that first set of lights, and headed back home. With more cars in the ditch than on the road, we knew when we were beat.

The kids were devastated. Who am I kidding? I was devastated. When you live far from extended family — even a seven-hours' drive, as we do — the time you do spend together is important. You want to confirm those connections. You want to make those memories.

Instead, I spent the rest of the day in my kitchen cooking up comfort food for my pity party. I made a pumpkin pie. I baked blueberry muffin bread. I made five dozen M&M cookies. I put together the most decadent spinach and artichoke dip you've ever tasted. ("What do artichokes taste like?" my Mom asked when I talked to her later. "Cheese," I answered.)

Once I got that out of my system, my husband, sons and I spent the weekend doing things we probably wouldn't have done at the cabin. We played a lazy afternoon game of Scooby Doo Monopoly. We dyed eggs. The boys put on a play in front of a color-crayoned backdrop. I went for an evening run as glitter fell from the sky. In a moment of euphoria over the beauty of the night, I thought, "I am lucky to be right here."

I called my parents on Sunday. The cacophony in the background told me that the family Easter had very much gone on without us.

Part of me felt that familiar ache. That longing to be part of the greater family — part of the noise and the drama and the smells and my father yelling for everyone to just settle down for one minute. But there was also that part of me that, when I hung up the phone, understood our quiet little weekend here was a more than fair consolation prize.