Green Easter

It’s Easter Sunday, and the sun has risen before we open our eyes. Cozy beneath two down comforters, we’d just kept dreaming and dreaming. After two days of rain, there is a puddle around the willow oak in our front yard, and every tree in sight has magically sprouted leaves. The air smells cold and wet—too chilly to leave the house.

The birds are out in droves, though, scoping out breakfast. A robin sits on a post while a wren sings, “Teakettle, teakettle.” Chickadees fly from branch to branch as the jays hop around the lawn. It’s a banquet out there.

Bob and I picked up our second Tesla yesterday. We named her Stella and parked her in the pole barn with Sophie. After we sell the Volt, we’ll be completely EV. At some point, we may even install solar panels to fuel our driving habits. How much greener can we get? I wonder, looking out across our spring lawn.

I think about who I was sixty Easter Sundays ago with my little aspirations and no awareness whatsoever of my impact on the world. Over the years, my ecological footprint grew—all that meat, those plane flights, the 8-cylinder cars, and even the cellophane easter grass—before shrinking back to reasonable, at least by American standards.

I try not to think about what our two new cars cost in environmental terms or how continuing to drive the old cars could have been the greener move. But, I prefer to live in my imagination, like that little girl with her Easter bonnet and her basket of treats, and so I choose to enjoy this new, sunny day with its promise of spring and greener days ahead.