Easter is NOT a Single Person Holiday

Easter always sneaks up on me. All the other holidays fall on predictable days and are easily marked on the calendar. But Easter hops around. One year it comes in March, another April, there's little rhyme or reason. One thing is for certain -- Easter is not for single people.
I would never invite all my friends over to celebrate Easter. I would never dye eggs or bake rabbit shaped sugar cookies to give away on Easter. I would never cook a ham, coating it with peachy jezabel sauce, steam asparagus, make homemade rolls and open bottles of clean, festive white wine to share with a motley collection of buddies. I'm not sure why. Maybe it is because Easter is religious and by acknowledging and celebrating it, it some how seems like I should also go to church. Maybe it is because at 30 years old, pastel eggs and sprouted wheat grass seems just a little silly. Whatever the reason, another Easter came and went, with nary an Easter moment aside from the adorable floral bag my mom sent stuffed with darling pastel candies and goodies. Yes, I'm thirty and my mother still gets me an Easter basket... but that's a whole other story.
I tried to revel in my solitude, but it was hard. It rained all day, hard sheets of rain that made it nearly impossible to go outside. I woke up early and couldn't fall back to sleep. I watched the sun rise and read the New Yorker in bed, and then ate oatmeal and drank coffee. It was tempting to think of breakfast out, but the idea of being surrounded by dozens of celebrating families was too much -- the lines, the spring dresses, the bows. I couldn't handle it. I lit candles and read and wrote and read some more. Still it was barely noon. At the grocery store later that afternoon I stocked up on ingredients for a springy rice soup and bought milk and yogurt and dried bing cherries. There was nobody in the store but the grocery was overflowing with samples -- large hunks of havarti cheese, small tastes of stuffed french toast with chai whipped cream, slices of bagels topped with store-made strawberry jam, mini pancakes with pure maple syrup, perfect blood orange sections. Who were all these extravagant tastes for? I realized that they were for the people like me: the girls who didn't have brunch dates, the folks without family, the people alone at the grocery store on Easter Sunday.
It made me feel better, but also a little worse. It certainly didn't help me feel any less alone. But it did make me feel a little less hungry. The chocolate cadbury mini eggs helped a little too.