A Basket Full of Easter Memories

Standing here with my brother Andrew,
circa 1981, I'm wearing a yellow sundress and
lace vest made by my mother for Easter.

My mother really knew how to do up Easter when we were growing up.

She sewed a new outfit for me to wear to church every year. She helped me and my brother dye dozens and dozens of eggs, most of which came from hens on our own farm. My dad liked to dye some too, and we always had one coffee mug of blue dye set aside for him to soak an egg extra long to get his favorite hue. We used wax crayons to create patterns, tiny stickers of ducklings and daisies, and these cool plastic cuffs that would form around the egg when dipped into hot water. Ah, the '70s.

My parents would send us to bed and then hide the eggs all over the house for us to seek on Sunday morning. As much as I like fancy shoes now, I pretty much lived barefoot on the farm. My mother recalls that Easter was the only day of the year that we kids wore slippers, only because we knew there would be an egg hidden in one. She also recalls our furious objections when she decided we were too old for this hide-n-seek game. I might have been 25 or so.

Perhaps that expression on my mother's face, circa 1979,
shows concern for how much candy her son could eat
and still be expected to behave in church later.

Easter baskets were a glorious riot of color and candy, for young and old alike.

In a brilliant move to reinforce how much we kids were to respect our daddy, she always put the biggest chocolate bunny into his basket. We thought that was pretty cool. He was a big guy, and the Easter Bunny knew he had to have a big piece of chocolate.

He never tore into it right away, displaying it in its box on the table next to his recliner for a week or more, giving us kids time to mow through our own goodies. Soon enough, we would start eying that big, beautiful, brown confection with big, beautiful, brown eyes that he just couldn't resist. He finally would open the package and let us bite off the ears.

I got a real, live bunny one year. It lived outside and pooped what looked like chocolate beans, but I never could convince my brother to taste-test.

Searching for hidden Easter eggs was definitely one
of the best parts of the holiday morning.

On Easter Sunday, we went to worship, and then the extended family gathered at our home for a meal. A particular favorite of my older sisters was my mother's calico casserole, a cheesy confection of ham and vegetables. There was roasted beast, also raised on our farm, and Grammy's pies. Life. Was. Good.

My mother is still knocking Easter out of the park, but she's wearing a backwards collar to do it these days. She is preaching basically non-stop from Palm Sunday through two Easter services, and all she wants to do after that is take a long nap. She may envy Jesus lying in a private, dark space for three days away from the rest of the world.

So today, I'm hosting a family meal. My dad has taken over nearly all of the cooking at the farm these days, but only part of the cleaning. A big to-do there, even if she's not making calico casserole, is still work for my mother. It's harder to guilt your kids into doing the dishes when they are chasing after their own children.

However, the roasted beast and some side dishes is all I'm able to manage this year. Apart from spring flowers and different placemats on my table, I didn't even decorate. I figured that if I didn't drag up from the basement my Grammy's collection of decorated eggs and rabbit figurines, I wouldn't have to bother putting them away again. I have enough work to do in the nursery, with my due date about five weeks away.

And don't bother looking for a basket of candy. Chocolate gives me heartburn now (*sob*).