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Easter Memories



As go the quirks of a memoirist, I'm writing about childhood Easters simply because they has never been written before and they left such fond memories...


Mother made Easter special.


My earliest memory was waking in the yellow room on the west end of the house. The blankets were pink and woven, and the bed made squeaky sounds when you jumped. It was a child’s white-railed twin facing a Scottish window showing soft grass and prickly evergreens. A door-cracked light hued the blue nursery on the other end of the Jack and Jill. I am of preschool age in this memory, my hair, still golden curls, my teeth, baby-straight. My sister, Kelly Grace, and I slept together and I was awake first.



Our Easter baskets were cushy yellow cloth with purple gingham interiors, and our names were stitched in pink cursive. On this particular Easter morning, peeping over the side, was a shadowy pair of delicate, lacy gloves! (How did the Easter Bunny know my size?)


We believed in it all.


This never distorted, by far, any sort of view I had of God and religion. In fact, belief in such things expanded my faith and trust that there really could be a God who did miracles. I especially saw this as a blessing as a teenager as I began to have personal supernatural encounters and distinctly saw how pictures such as Santa were mirrors of a very real God who loved me and was beyond time and reason.


The blankets shook and Kelly squeaked over to me (I probably woke her up). We pulled at each finger, feeling the delicate lace so princess-like. These weren’t the holey kind of gloves that shriveled like little yarn nets. These gloves had full fingers! We were adamant to play Jane from Mary Poppins.


Easter candies were Russell Stover’s cream-filled eggs of whipped raspberry or savory peach, hollow and hard-shelled bunnies with ears that melted in your mouth, mottled pectin jellybeans (Kelly liked these), marshmallow eggs, and coconut crème flaked eggs nobody liked. Jodi Benson’s television voice was the tune of this Sunday morning, illustrated with light flashes, green and blue contrasts, clouds and cartoon characters of Jesus and Peter and Judas. It was an episode of The Beginner’s Bible, the Easter Story, which remains a fondly quoted and fondly sung movie. All of us five girls see this movie tradition accompanying the act of popping pink, puffy curlers out of our bobbed cuts. Our clothes were not laid in our rooms but in the living room on an ottoman, all the way from the linen slip to the ruffled bloomer. (Mom wouldn’t have time to go to each closet and arrange all five daughters’ bows in their different drawer and compartments, not when she had to barrel her own hair and comb the swishy bangs so popular in the 2000s.)


Because of the lovely Mary Lou Mashburn, clothes were an event themselves. Trips were arranged to The Secret Garden boutique weeks before the holiday as Mom made certain all the ruffle socks had pairs, the ribbons weren’t strewn, and the flowers on the shoe buckles hadn’t ripped. But some of these flaws were unavoidable, like the nail polish stain on the bubble sleeve of a Neiman Marcus that never fully disappeared. Our great-grandmother, Mimi, gracefully living her last days at home, would confirm all five girls’ coordinating Sunday dresses through a telephone call. “Yes, all the girls have their dresses laid out on the ottoman.” Mom would confirm. Before the years of collaboration with us children, everything was a gift and surprise, and color was safely going to be pink: Kelly Grace would get the puffed sleeves, Bria, the jumper, and Allison, the biggest bow. Candice was tall and needed a 10-12 even though she was 9. Angel was bald so she must have a special barrette.



It was likely we ate breakfast in the echoey church atrium, either white chocolate raspberry scones (split in half) or a bagel with strawberry cream cheese (also halved). I liked to treasure hunt for the white chocolate chunks on the scones – especially the ones baked and crusted on the borders. We ate with a nanny who had a common name from the early 2000s young adult population: a Jen or Jess, Lauren or Laura, Erin or Paige. They wore double shirts! This fascinated me. There were layers under a mid-length dress with a bootcut jean, layers over a skin-tight turtleneck, layers in vests and scarves and denim. Sometimes they even wore flowers in their hair like us. The most distinct childhood Easter service was the year our church threw Gildan tee shirts to all the 2nd and 3rd grade children in their classroom, one I recall was gray with fruit characters alluding to the Fruits of the Spirit, and another was white with a fence and spring graphics. By the end of stocking hours on Sunday, I think I had collected three tee shirts. My siblings and cousins did, too.


Oh, the joy of that hour we tore open a Russell Stover, perhaps the raspberry one, and slipped off our stockings for a pair of basketball shorts and Fruits of the Spirit tee shirt! It was off to the farm for Sunday dinner, off to the 90 acres of Missouri soil where the horses grazed and the dogs ran to meet our blue Honda honking at the entrance of Riverview Ranch, our curls loosely dangling, a bracelet on the floor. Though the spread was always a feast, it was not distinct in my Easter childhood memories as being something I looked forward to more than the pink box of sugar drizzled Peeps on the counter, neatly stacked on a tea tray for little hands to shove in chocolate lazed lips before running outside to the little log cabin built to be our playhouse…


I hope your day is full of childlike wonder and thankfulness. Happy Easter Sunday!

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