This Easter week, I can’t help but think about my Easter three years ago.  In 2017, my family and I spent Holy week in Spain with my host family from high school.  The Easter bunny doesn’t hide eggs in Spain, but the entire week before Easter is filled with ornate processions that represent the story of Easter.  When I was young, I heard my host grandma talk about the beautiful parades and celebrations and I had always wanted to bring my family there to celebrate this special time of year with them.  Seeing my children, who go to a Spanish immersion school here in Chico celebrate the holiday with my host sister’s children, who go to an English immersion school in Madrid was a dream come true for me.

My host family lives in a small town in La Mancha, Spain called Villarrubbia de los ojos.  It is about the size of Gridley, so you can imagine that a girl like me from Nord fit right in!  On our trip, my dad, a walnut farmer from Chico, got to spend the day with my host dad, an olive farmer from Spain. We toured their farms and I got to brush up on my Spanish agricultural vocabulary translating for them.  It never occurred to me how much my two families had in common.

This week is so different from our week three years ago.  In Villarrubia, there are no parades in the streets.  Instead of beautiful processions, the local farmers are driving through with their tractors and spraying the streets with bleach to combat this virus.  Here, we had plans of a huge Easter egg hunt on my grandparent’s ranch, but that won’t happen either.  It’s not how we all planned on spending our holiday but I find comfort in knowing that we are all in this together.  Not just our small community, not just our country but the whole world is on hold, waiting for a time that we can all be reunited again.  We will get through this as a world community.  One day this will all be over and we will look back on this time of social distancing.  We will appreciate the ability to hold a friend’s hand and walk down the street side by side again.  I can’t wait for that day. #Resistiré