1. You CAN go back. For PB’s birthday this month, our daughter arranged dinner out with the “original six”, meaning no spouses or kids were invited. We rode together to the restaurant and there was some faintly familiar banter about who would have to sit in the back seat. At the restaurant, we all took our places at the table in the same seating arrangement as years ago. Only a few things seemed to have changed: 1) nobody teased a sibling to the point of tears and 2) nobody farted and fell off the chair laughing. They are all grown up. It was such a lovely time.

2. There is more than one kind of cheesecake. For PB’s birthday, a good friend took a chunk of pepperjack cheese and cut it to look like a mini birthday cake, candles and all. It was a true one-of-a-kind cheese cake for a one-of-a-kind guy.

3. An early Easter overloads March. We had Daylight Savings Time, St. Patrick’s Day, Palm Sunday, the first day of spring, Good Friday, Easter and the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament all packed into two weeks. Whatever will we do in April?

4. The best way to break a reading fast is to get up at 4:30 a.m. and read the first two chapters in five different books before going to Easter services at church — not unlike pigging out at the Easter buffet after church. Both felt like extravagant indulgences. One made my stomach ache, one made my head ache. But I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

5. Spending a whole month meditating on Jesus’ last week on earth as recorded in the gospels is wonderful and terrible. I wrote two pages of longhand in a college-ruled spiral notebook every morning, getting my heart deep into Passion Week. I can’t go back and read over it now without weeping. “You gave your life, to give me mine. You say that I am free. How can it be?” (“How Can It Be?” by Lauren Daigle)

6. Buzzer beaters are only exciting if it’s a guy from your college team who throws up the shot with no time on the clock and it swishes through the net, sending you to the Sweet 16. Otherwise, it’s devastating. But if it is a guy from your team, you get to shout like crazy and jump around in front of the TV like you’re in the celebration huddle.

7. Best advice of the month: “Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.”

8. Tulips and daffodils only come up in the spring if bulbs were planted in the fall. But in the fall, I’m not thinking about tulips and daffodils. I’m more interested in pumpkins and chrysanthemums. Every spring I knock myself on the head and say, “Darn. Too late for tulips again this year.”

9. It’s possible to get your Christmas shopping done in March. There was a big sale on a big ticket item and I had a 30% off coupon to boot. I bought a bunch of them and socked them away. Fa-la-la-la-la.

10. I’m not only saved from something (eternal separation from God), I’m also saved for something (for the life of the world). This spring, I’m looking forward to learning what that means with my Bible study friends.