Some background to the story, One Easter Evening.  

This story appears on pages 12-14 of the New Zealand School Journal, part 4, number two, 1994, where it was first published, with illustrations by Sally McAra (one of which has been cut down slightly to fit the text in this web version). The story arose out of a real incident in the life of my own family, one of those pleasant experiences that families often have, but too easily forget.   After we came home from the outing, I wrote the details down and put them aside.  It might have been a couple of years later that I came across the notes again, and decided to form them into a story.   It was originally longer, but the editor at the School Journal wisely cut out an extraneous chunk.   Each of my children appears under an alias - 'Alison' is my oldest daughter, who was going through a grumpy patch, went through a worse one later, and is now a top-class mother of our first grand-daughter.  Her real name means, a 'Garland.'    [You can see a picture of them both not long after my grand-daughter was born,  if you go right to the bottom of another page.]  The unnamed storyteller is my second daughter, whose real name means "Father's Joy."   She's occasionally grumpy, but mostly very cuddly.   My third daughter appears under the name of 'Becky,' and doesn't get much to do in the story - though spitting with her mother off the promenade would be quite in character (as it is for her mother!).  Her real name means, 'Promise of God' (though I see in some places they translate it, 'Oath of God.') My older son - 'Jim' - appears as a bit of a fraidy cat in the story.   This was a temporary aberration - he's obviously grown out of whatever was bugging him at the time, and never mentions tidal waves.   He's now a creative computer whiz, and his real name means, 'Son of the Right Hand.' Tommy was exactly like he appears in the story - in the original version I also mentioned the time he fell in the pool at the Botanical Gardens.   He was a hectic child, leaving adults tearing their hair out wherever he went. However, he's turned into a lovely young man (both he and his brother are prone to hugging their father - did I mention that?), and now has the opposite effect on adults - they can't speak too highly of him.   His real name means, 'Of the Lord', and he is. You can see more photos of my sons with my grand-daughter, and well as one of my wife and I coping with her creativity...! Return to the Short Story Index - Go to my Home Page