It is a dim and blue Easter morning in the little northern city by the sea.

I am not a churchgoer, so during the hoohah of Holy Week I am always on the outside looking in. When we were younger, Easter was a child-centered holiday--colored eggs and baskets and meals. But without the boys at home, it feels a bit accidental . . . a religious holiday that I recognize intellectually but that has no personal resonance beyond nostalgia and the pagan riots of spring.

This year, for some reason, I have even been feeling a little resentful about the Christian overtones of Easter: a little twitchy about tales of prayer and ritual; a little impatient with people's needs to publicly exhort and expiate. I do get weary of the emotional trappings. I start to feel as if I'm fighting my way out of a bag of wool. This is unkind and unreasonable of me, a teenage-style grumpiness; and to those of you who are believers, I apologize for my cranky agnosticism. I am happy for you. But, for whatever reason, I cannot endure organized religion, neither its comforts nor its cruelties.

Still, I love many of the things that Christianity has nurtured: Bach and the mystery plays and the scent of Easter lilies in a cold room. And T and I are together, and it is spring, and that is a good-enough reason for a holiday. This morning I'll marinate a leg of lamb in yogurt, oregano, and cardamom. I'll make lemon custards and a raspberry coulis. This afternoon I'll listen to my first Red Sox game of the new season. In between, I'll sit in my study and read the poems of George Herbert, the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poems of Richard Wright. In between, T and I will walk out into the brisk spring day--a day of wind and crocuses, a day of whitecaps and gulls.