Easter and Bread

First off, I had a wonderful Haitian dance class today, with a woman from Haiti (subbing for my regular teacher). It was interesting to see a more feminine side of this dance (we did a choreography of market women sifting rice, which was really fun). My regular teacher, S., shows a more masculine side of this dance. This is the class which is going to make my body strong again. I walked out feeling hopeful even that I would work again at my teaching job. I just got my leave approved through the end of December.

 My heart is very sad about all this still, though things are getting better bit by bit. This was one of the hardest times of my life, to come to a realization that the love I thought I had turned out to be nothing but a total deception, where my health tanked, when I was diagnosed as bipolar 2, had to leave my job because my health was gone, and had to face my greatest fear with lupus, being put on chemotherapy like my sister, who died within a few years of doing so: all of this happening in a matter of perhaps three weeks was enough to kill me, and I am bloody glad and lucky it didn't.  And still, how small all these things are in the context of the world, of people who have lost loved ones, such as in the terrible Malaysian airliner tragedy--people who do not even know what happened to their loved ones--and recently, in the ferry disaster.  I can only hope that what I have been through makes me more compassionate with the world.  It is a hard climb, yet I am climbing, a step more every day.

I am getting ready for Easter, as much as I celebrate it...even though the two churches I might like to attend here in Santa Cruz are no longer safe for me to go to (sadly enough...I really would have liked to attend The Center for Spiritual Living this year with Thistle), we are going to do our best with it.  Tomorrow is egg-dying and something very special to me:  making a recipe that comes straight from my Italian great-grandmother, braided Easter bread with red-dyed eggs baked into it.  The red is such an amazing, fertile color against the pale brown crust and looks very pretty in the braid.  Even if Thistle and I don't make this perfectly, we are going to have a lot of fun.  At the left is a picture of what I hope to accomplish (though this has pastel eggs...the eggs I will dye tomorrow for the bread will be an intense pomegranate red).

Wish me luck!  If it works, I will post a picture tomorrow.