Easters Past

Sitting here in silence on Easter afternoon...so different from the Easters in my past. There is no family gathering because we no longer number enough to gather. I am reminded that even though I wouldn't be seeing my father today, this is the first Easter when he has not been here on earth with us.

It wasn't always this way. In my childhood days there would have been a houseful who would be getting around to thinking of leaving about this time. I would have gone to several egg hunts---at First Methodist on Saturday and maybe another at a friend's home also. Then on Sunday after a lunch of turkey and dressing or ham with garden vegetables and Mama's graham cracker crumb cake, all the older relatives would take turns hiding my eggs over and over again til the afternoon waned. Being an only child, grandchild and niece on both sides of the family, I never even had a first cousin, although I do have some great cousins still. It was part of the reason the parents, aunts, and grandparents indulged me, since I was always the only child at gatherings. I could never have envisioned then that one day these people would begin to fall one by one, leaving me in a house full of memories, alone.

Mama, God bless her, went to church with me this morning and we shared the Easter meal she prepared yesterday. It takes us several days to finish all the leftovers, since we both, from habit, cook for several. Usually we go out, but with all the crowds today, she wouldn't have been able to stand as long as it takes to get a table or walk from an out-of-the-way parking spot.

Mama would have dyed my eggs on Friday, the kitchen smelling of vinegar, while I ooohed and ahhhed over the colors of the eggs. I remember hosting an egg hunt at my house one Saturday before Easter. It was the only time I found the prize egg in my whole life, but Mama made me put it back, explaining that the hostess shouldn't claim the prize. It was a gold plastic egg from Bill Sumner's shoe store. I think it was a promotion for Red Goose Shoes, which he sold as well as Buster Brown's.

My dress would have been a work of art from my Gran Miller. She made all my clothes til I was in high school. I thought everyone knew I had homemade clothes, when I just wanted a Sears dress or a plain old Orlon sweater from Penney's. How stupid can you be? My Gran wasn't a good seamstress, she was a gifted, artistic seamstress who you could take into a department store to see a dress you loved. She would examine it carefully, turning it wrong side out, seeing exactly how it was made. Then she could go home and make it without a pattern. I always had new patent leather shoes, nylon anklets, white gloves, a hat and an Easter corsage. Most of these have gone by the wayside with today's fashions. Looking back at a picture collage in my hall, my Uncle Reuben, an amateur photographer, captured every Easter with me, my mama and daddy all dressed to the nines, standing on our front porch. God bless you, Uncle Reuben, for capturing those Easters so now I can look back and remember.

I would have received marshmallow chicks, chocolate bunnies, and always, an Easter basket. Plastic grass would litter the house, and each summer I'd always find an unfound egg, overlooked and rotten.

I've decided to relish the past; not to cry because it's over, but to smile because I had it. Some children have no memories like this at all. So it's best to treasure them and cherish them because tomorrow is promised to no one. If only I had known that all those years ago.