After a day of dramatic temperature shifts and a night of howling winds, the cold morning melted away in the sun and AJ�s spring officially began with the neighborhood Easter party at the barn behind our house.

Yesterday, AJ picked out a cake mix and some frosting from the supermarket shelf. We measured our ingredients into the bowl with AJ stirring solemnly and occasionally indulging in surreptitious licks of fingers. We frosted it this morning with fluffy white icing and covered it with a rainbow of candy sprinkles. Then we wrapped it and left to walk up the hill. I had a cake in one hand, and AJ�s small hand in the other.

We laid out our cake on the communal table. I cut fat slices with a knife while AJ wandered shyly to the next room to see if the girl next door had yet arrived. He came running back in a state of nervous excitement. �There�s a dog!� �In the barn?� �There�s a dog in there!�

I finished with the cake and he grabbed my hand and dragged me to the next room. There was indeed a dog, a strange hairless variety that shook with cold or fear. There were also bunnies, chicks, baby turkeys, geese and ducks. I quite fell in love with one small yellow duckling that we nicknamed Ping. He peeped whenever I picked him up and tried to hide his head under the curve of my hand. AJ was fascinated, but was most enchanted, I think, with the sight of his fearless friend, The Girl Next Door, dressed in purple taffeta and reaching into buckets of bunnies with both hands and holding a furry body � or maybe two � aloft. I worry about the trauma to the animals � so many child-hands can�t be easy to take. The Girl Next Door�s father observed, a vehement vegetarian (since, as he told us, the harmonic convergence, which seemed to him like a good time to stop eating animals) that it still was better for them than being force-fed steroids in cages. A conversation stopper.

After AJ helped himself to some cookies and cake and a fat strawberry, we sat down at the craft table to weave an Easter basket. If truth be told, I think my husband did most of it. But AJ was proud of it nonetheless. He ran to pat the animals one more time.

And then it was time for the egg hunt. Poor AJ. He has such excited memories of egg hunts past but what I remember most is that it almost always ends with him weeping. That is also the way I remember the egg hunts of my youth. He helped me to strew the colorful plastic eggs, each filled with a small treat, across the field. Then he joined the children�s Easter parade behind the scary bunny and had his first tearful episode when he heard them say that only kids 4 and under could hunt for eggs � he didn�t hear that his turn would be next. And then it was his turn and he was happy. He and The Girl Next Door and her big brother grabbed their requisite five eggs and came back smiling to show them to the scary bunny, who was making sure no one got more than his fair share. Once everyone had five eggs, they let everyone back in for a melee over the remaining eggs. An overeager child plowed into AJ and knocked him down and the tears began to flow. His eggs flew out of his Spiderman basket. Several kids stopped to help him, but he thought they were taking his eggs and cried even harder. The Girl Next Door�s big brother, age 8 (�I�ll be 9 in 25 days�) came over and slipped an egg from his basket into AJ�s. I wanted to hug him, but my lap was full of AJ. AJ felt better.

After a brief return inside where AJ and The Girl Next Door got deep into a conversation while sitting inside a cardboard fireplace [alas, my camera was not working, so there is no photographic evidence of this picturesque tete-a-tete], we trooped back down the hill with the remaining pieces of cake and went outside to play. AJ and the neighbors tore around the two yards for an hour and a half before I dragged AJ home for a reluctant nap.

It is now Saturday afternoon and AJ is in his bed, I am in mine and my husband is dozing on the sofa in front of the ball game. Siesta time.

1 people said it like they meant it