Assignment #4 - Taylor Galavotti - Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday. For a Catholic family like mine, it's an excellent excuse to get roaring drunk and make whatever sexist or homophobic comment that suits your fancy. The worst part is they all think that I agree. So I smile and nod and find my way back to the kitchen where my Aunt Gay always manages to end up. 

There I can talk about my "crazy liberal ideas" like a woman's right to her own body or god forbid, gun control. She tells me about her life when she was my age, sneaking out to go to parties and being a cheerleader in high school. We eat powdered sugar donuts even though it's 11 pm. We talk and talk until finally the designated driver has had enough of this not-drinking nonsense and herds the drunk 40-somethings into the car to head home. By that time, I'm too tired for words, so I stumble off to bed, feeling exhausted but happy.

In the following months, she sent our family a letter to thank us for coming. She wrote half the card to me, recounting how happy our chat made her feel. I could feel my heart fill up with happiness; it felt something akin to waking up to snow on Christmas or seeing decorations finally go up (even though it's only November). Voicing my opinions like that was something I had never dreamt of doing for fear of being outcasted by the rest of my family, but I found a like-minded friend that Easter Sunday night. I'm only sad that I didn't talk to her sooner.