It is officially spring. Finally. And Easter is nigh. We are normally in Miami for Easter, rejoicing in the Easter miracle by sunbathing, swimming and playing Yahtzee in the shade. This year, for the first time in many years, we are celebrating at home, with all the whims, beauty, and frustration that is springtime in Ohio. As I write, I see green grass and new growth outside ... 24 hours ago, everything was shrouded in 3 inches of snow.

It's good to be back on our farm in early spring. While it is “the muddy season” on any farm, the place is also percolating with new life. The trees wake up a little more every day, the fern peak out of the ground and begin their slow yawn upwards, and almost every day there is a new baby horse born in the barn.

I am pulling my various little Easter decorations out of storage, festooning the front door with a forsythia wreath, the table with rabbits, Easter eggs, and colorful flowers, smiling with guilty delight all the way. My father would not approve. Celebrating Easter was a complicated thing to navigate when I was little.

When I was about 8 or 9, my best friend Kammy, and I found these shiny new plastic eggs that my mother had bought. They each had a little hole at the top with a wire string. We spent an entire afternoon a couple of weeks before Easter carefully taking each egg out of the package and decorating the dogwood tree in front of our house. We were so thrilled with our handiwork. That little tree veritably radiated with pastel color. “Wait ‘til Marge and Jack see this,” I thought to myself proudly. But when my dad, a devout, daily communicant Catholic, got a hold of our project, he fumed. “Don’t you know we cannot celebrate Easter until after Good Friday?”

I was mortified with guilt. Not quite as bad as when I was caught playing mass on the front porch with some extra hosts left lying around after my parent’s in-home anniversary mass ... but still, wracked with guilt. The eggs came down, our tear-stained faces looking up into the tree branches to be sure we got every last one.

Today’s frivolous, child-centered Easter was not really a thing in our house growing up. Easter was all about The Passion, the waiting, and celebrating the miracle of Easter Sunday. Sure, we would color Easter eggs, that strong vinegar smell and food dye sticking to our fingertips all day. Every year, I went to an Easter Egg hunt at the park nearby, but never, never found a single egg because the big kids always raided the woods before I even had a chance ... either that, or I overslept, arriving late, after it was already over. Then, invariably, months after Easter, some time every summer, the real egg hunt would ensue as we all hunted fervently inside our house for the rogue rotten egg that had never been found a few months earlier. My mother, brothers and I would sniff the air of the family room like truffle dogs until we discovered the culprit, rotting comfortably in the chandelier or the toy box.

Easter was a serious, religious holiday, only to be celebrated on Easter morning with my dad belting out in Latin, “Resurrexit Sicut Dixit” (He is risen, as He said). We never received any toys on Easter, just some candy and that static, sticky, green plastic grass that kept surfacing until around Christmas. And so, when I received a shiny, Dawn Doll beauty pageant set on Easter one year -- complete with dolls, costumes, and a fashion runway and stage -- I was shocked. While my brothers all watched golf on TV to celebrate the Risen Lord, I set up my little dolls, dressing them and inserting them each into the mechanical walkway that would let them strut down the catwalk as I cranked a little lever on the side. Halleluiah, it was amazing. But then Jack got a look at the new toy and was not amused. We don’t, it seems, celebrate our Lord and Savior by playing with little dolls. (Golf was ok, though). The dolls all went back into the box, and back to the store, with me, yet again, hunched in shame that I could be so sacrilegious.

Also, Easter baskets were barely a thing growing up. More often than not, my brothers and I would wake to the baskets just kind of plopped in the middle of the dining room table. “There, knock yourselves out,” I’m sure my mother was saying, as she shuffled off to bed the night before. After a day or so, she would dump the candy from all the baskets into one large bowl to consolidate the goods, making it easier for her to access the chocolate eggs, I’m thinking.

As a young mother myself, I walked the line at Eastertime between paganism, Catholicism, capitalism, and pragmatism, stuffing my girls’ baskets with chocolate crosses, jelly beans, Polly Pocket Dolls and sunscreen for the beach. One year, at our annual Miami Easter stay, I had sent my husband out to purchase prepackaged baskets from the convenience store nearby. Mr. Buzz Kill returned with only 2 baskets, declaring that our oldest, at age 10, was “too old for Easter baskets.” I protested, but then, in the chaos of a large family beach vacation, never got around remedying the problem, or organizing a “big girl” basket for her ... until it was too late. There we were, on Easter morning, with my three girls excitedly looking for their Easter baskets hidden in our hotel room. One found hers in the shower. The next found hers behind the window drapes. And there was my oldest ... searching and searching, with me sweating and pacing back and forth, scolding myself for having not solved this issue in time. “Mom, where’s my basket?” she asked, befuddled that she couldn’t find it. “Um ... sweetie ...” I stammered. I don’t even remember the rest, except that the poor thing fled the room, spending the rest of Easter crying and giving me and my husband evil glances at the pool. It was awful. We deserved it. Once again, I was filled with Eastertime shame, not because I wasn’t holy, but because I just didn’t have my shit together as a mother. Ugh. Sure, she’s forgiven me, but I just can’t let it go.

And so, some twenty years later, I’ve just mailed out an Easter basket to my eldest, now a grown adult. In it, she will find some trinkets, some candy, some practical little gifts, all penitential efforts to purge my guilt from years ago.

But in this Easter season of redemption, forgiveness, resurrection, and renewal, perhaps it is time to forgive myself, move on, and let it go. Just as soon as I throw away my hair shirt.

“What is that odd smell?” I thought to myself, stepping into the apartment. It smelled swampy, frothy, vaguely fishy. I followed the scent to the kitchen. The air was heavy and humid with the dank odor. There, standing at the stove, enveloped in the putrid steam, was my husband.

“Hey! I’ve got about ten pounds of iguana boiling here. I thought we’d make iguana tacos tonight.”

I am an omnivore. Growing up in a big family, I was expected to eat whatever was put before me. I’m a “good eater.” I am a proponent of “slow food,” local food, and sustainable practices. And, while I am not a hunter myself, I appreciate those who hunt mindfully, consuming or sharing the meat, walking humbly on the earth, giving thanks and participating in the circle of life. Also, I am married to The Fishmonger. I am used to him walking in the door with something completely random and me having to figure out how to cook it: cod cheeks, blowfish, squid, octopus, crayfish, whole fish of any kind. Being married to The Fishmonger is like being on a cooking game show. “Contestants, are you ready? Get set! Figure out how to COOK THAT!”

Bottom line: if I’m hungry enough and willing to figure out how to cook it, I’ll choke it back ...

But iguana?

Green iguanas are an invasive species in south Florida. Over the years, folks who had second thoughts about owning them as pets have set them loose in the lush, tropical environment and they have flourished to the point of pushing out the indigenous species of brown iguanas. Green iguanas are a problem. They are eating vegetation and procreating faster than they can be eliminated. The same thing is going on in the Florida Everglades with pythons. With no natural predators there, they have propagated like post WWII families and now the baby boomers of the Everglades have become a serious problem. In fact, The state of Florida pays registered hunters good money to catch and kill invasive pythons.

Which brings me back to my husband, Iguana Dundee. Not one to chill out on the beach for more than a podcast episode, Dundee will often arrange little adventures for himself while we holiday in Florida: deep sea fishing, bone fishing, checking out what the local fishing charters are bringing in. This year he was invited to go iguana hunting. With all the togetherness of the past year of Covid, the time and space apart was much appreciated, thank you. “Buh-bye, now,” I nodded as I sipped my morning coffee. “I can’t miss you until you go.”

We had encouraged my brother, sister-in-law and niece to come down to this part of Florida, enticing them with descriptions of the quiet beaches and tasty local food. I’m certain this is not what they had in mind. I peered into the turbid, roiling pot to inspect the iguana meat. Legs and tails danced to and fro in the bubbly water. Scrunching up my nose in revulsion, I snapped on the exhaust fan. “It smells like swamp ass in here.” The reptile parts in the pot were a jarring addition to this posh kitchen with its stainless-steel appliances. I exited to the balcony with my brother’s family, taking in the spectacular view of Miami twinkling in the distance and inhaled the salty air to cleanse my palate.

“My guide said to boil the legs and tails for twenty minutes, skin the meat and prepare it just like you would chicken,” Dundee said from inside, excitedly tending his cauldron. “I’ve got twenty more pounds of meat in the cooler!”

“For the record, I am not skinning anything,” I shouted back into the kitchen.

Dundee left to take a shower because, you know, he smelled like a dead iguana and before I knew it, my sister-in-law and I were wrist deep in iguana parts, picking meat off of little legs and tails. White and firm, it had the texture somewhere between frog legs and chicken. I noted that the tail meat was striped, just like the iguana skin itself, which struck me as kind of cool. Who knew?

We chopped onion, garlic, peppers, sprinkled taco spices into the pan and stirred in the iguana meat. Feeling like I was entering into a frat house hazing ceremony, I shouted out to my daughters, “Someone order a couple of pizzas as a backup plan!” I swigged my wine.

One by one, our three daughters kept circling through the kitchen, like curious sharks, sneering at the concoction on the stovetop. My brother cracked another beer and mused that this would be a great business opportunity: use the ample supply of local iguana to start a taco truck on the beach. “We’ll call it I Wanna Iguana!” he shouted, pleased with himself.

I waited for the pizza to come and poured myself another glass of wine. “What is taking him so long?” my daughter Flora cried, getting more hangry as the minutes ticked by, fervently refreshing her app.

“The hell with it,” I declared. “I’m starving and I’m now officially drunk. Let’s do this.” Setting the table for dinner, I rallied the troops. “This is no different than any other meat or fish you eat. It’s just that this animal was in someone’s backyard this afternoon, about twenty miles from here, scaring their shitso. And Dad killed it. Big whoop.” I doused my iguana taco with picante sauce and raised it to the table. “Eat local, ya’ll.”

Emboldened by wine and hunger, I pushed the image of the iguana’s reptilian mug out of mind and bravely took a bite. It was a bit slippery, kind of bland, really. Better than I feared, a little tough. It was food. It was edible. I was hungry. Nuff said. I swallowed hard and took another generous gulp of my wine. “Where the hell is that pizza?”

That night, I woke up with a fever, chills, and visions of green iguanas dancing in my stomach. Just as I was about to panic – did we consume some awful, rare iguana toxin? -- I remembered it was twelve hours after my second Covid vaccine. Bad timing for an iguana tasting party. So much for going to bed early and pushing liquids. Well, there was that wine ...

I am certain there is a better way to prepare iguana; my attempt was admittedly half-hearted. Plenty of people eat iguana. It actually is a pretty lean meat, contains more protein than chicken, and Lord knows it’s plentiful. Restaurants in New York (before Covid times) were paying $100 a pound for iguana meat. Some day, I would like to try out a good restaurant’s version of iguana tacos.

For now, it’s all too soon to think about. And besides, I’m resting up, getting ready for the next Fishmonger Cooking Challenge. God help me if he walks in with python meat.