OK, this is my Easter column. It’s Good Friday, and I have no idea what to write about. I’ve written more than 29 years of Easter columns. I’ve written about coloring eggs, chocolate bunnies and family disasters. I try to avoid anything religious. Everybody else covers that.

She, who just took the mirror off my desk because, she says, I spend too much time wailing about losing my looks, says I have to stop writing about myself, that everything isn’t always me, me, me.

Additional Photos

OK. My deadline approaches. I’m scanning through some old photos, newspaper clippings and magazine shots, hoping to find an idea or something fresh and original about Easter.

Here’s a big colored shot of the new pope. He looks pretty good for his age. I think he’s my age, but I have more hair than he does. OK, he’s the pope and I’m not; but I have more hair and I look better in white than he does.

I’m glad I’m not the pope, because I look too pale in red, I only go to mass four times a year, and I haven’t even been to confession in 50 years.

The last time I went to confession was when I got married. She thought it would be a good idea. She quoted someone — St. Augustine, I think — who said, “If you’re going to enter a union, it’s best to begin with a clean soul.” Maybe it wasn’t Augustine. Maybe it was Jimmy Hoffa. I forget. I went to confession and cleaned my soul, and we walked in the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue. Done.

Oh, here’s that shot of me at Easter on the pony, the one I think became the Easter ham. I’m wearing a little blue suit with shorts and a white collar and cuffs. I looked good in blue. Does the pope ever have to wear blue?

Here’s one of me carrying an empty Easter basket. That’s my baby sister just behind me. Her basket is full of colored eggs. She always found the most.

My mother always spoiled her. My mother felt that my sister would be hurt if she couldn’t find any eggs, so my mother kept nudging her towards the hiding places. I hated that.

Maybe I wasn’t as tiny and cute as she, but I had more hair. She’s in her 70s now and has more hair and it’s still black, but it’s not real black. I’m gray, but I think I’ve aged better. I really hated that she found more eggs. I’ve never told her that, but I will call her tomorrow and say so. I had longer eyelashes, too. I’ll tell her that as well.

Going through some magazines, I see that Robert Redford is on the cover of the latest issue of Esquire. She, who is working at her desk now, went to acting school with Robert in New York and famously kissed him in a play they were in on Broadway. She never mentions that, of course; and when I ask her how she really felt about him, she just smiles and goes back to her book. I hate that smile. It’s that “For me to know and you to worry about” smile.

They were just friends, of course, and what does it matter? He’s her age now and he shows it. He has more wrinkles than I do, and his hair is still red. How is that possible at his age to still have the same color hair he had when he was 20? I think I have longer eyelashes as well.

Finally, here’s that snapshot I was looking for. There’s me at the Berghof Studios in New York. God, I was handsome. I see that I had a lot of hair and still long eyelashes. That’s Zero Mostel with Geraldine Page in the last row with Annie Bancroft. They’re all gone now. Everybody in that class is gone but me.

She just passed by on her way to Good Friday services at church and reminded me not to be writing about myself. I promised I wouldn’t. I said this all about Easter. Now you know why I don’t go to confession anymore. OK, where did she hide my mirror?

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.