One of my mother’s glorious traditions was the Easter Egg
Hunt. I say glorious because my mother was glorious with the creativity and
artistic flair for color and form she brought to any celebration – big or
small. And the Egg Hunt became quite big, over the years.
We have
pictures of the eggs and girls adorning my Grandmother’s Mary Street yard. I,
my sister, and our cousin are in our Easter bonnets and matching coats. We are
holding our baskets and usually smiling, in various stages of glee and remorse.
My best memory is actually the sounds accompanying at least one of these
events. I am saying, “I found one!” and as I run through the cool spring-green
grass I hear my sister say, “It’s my turn!” What follows is a jumble of
let-her-have-it-you-have-enough’s and cries and groans and awwww’s. The
pictures cannot catch visual representations of this sordid behavior. But this event
was not my Mother’s creation. My clearest memory of her initiative comes years
later.
Mom had decided that we were too old for
wicker basket sports, so she announced that this would be our last hurrah. I
woke that morning and immediately spotted a green plastic egg – in my bedroom! Twisting
the halves apart, I wondered how she had managed to put it in my room during
the night. I was a notoriously light sleeper. Then all thoughts except
“Surprise!” flew into the softly lit morning. A folded piece of paper and 2 or
3 M&M’s fell into my open hand. The paper held a clue! I may have put on
slippers and a robe, I can’t remember. I know I started for the stairs as there
was a hint about the kitchen, I think, and Mom stood at the bottom. “You have
to wait for Bobbi to wake up. Come down and watch TV but don’t look around!”
Once again she vastly over-rated my ability to follow directions or curb my
curiosity.
After groaning and rolling my eyes,
I sat in front of the television and examined the room through slit lids and
barely noticeable twists of my head. I thought. There was one egg with
mismatched colors (half was blue and the other half yellow – another miracle of
the plastic invasion) sitting on the mantle, behind a ceramic basket. When my
sleepy sibling finally shuffled down the hall from her downstairs bedroom, I
was off the chair like a shot. I was just about to open the lovely blue and
yellow ovoid when Mom proclaimed, “your eggs are the solid colors. Put that
back!”
“Well, thanks for the warning,” I
whispered, just loud enough for her to hear. Bobbi managed to look incredibly
sleepy and pouty at the same time. We had skills.
The rest of that morning was one of
the best holidays I can remember. The clues were wonderful – and numbered, for
us or Mom I do not know. Each egg was a riddle, challenging our ability to
interpret metaphor and recall the blueprints of our home. Achieving the end of the
search is still a sensory event. I was in our bathroom (upstairs and next to my
room, again). The warmth and soft pink of the light was so comforting. Our
linen closet was just the upper half of the wall and its double doors opened
with white-painted brass knobs. That clean, freshly washed smell met my face as
I leaned into the soft piles of folded terry-cloth and spotted the basket in
the back corner. There was very little candy in its plastic grass filler, but a
gift-wrapped present leaned against the wicker rim. It held a beautiful ceramic
statue of St. Francis of Asissi. Tall and slender, the saint’s wreathed head
was bent to touch a fawn that melted into his robe. A bird perched on his
shoulder. The figures were colored with a brown and green glaze that melted
over the forms. It seemed to have been made just for me, and my Mother’s recognition of
that overwhelmed me with her love. I told her how much I loved the statue and
the treasure hunt, actually in awe of her skill for pleasing even me - the most
cynical and irritable member of our family. I don’t know when I gave up St.
Francis’s long-treasured, chipped likeness but would love to have it back
again.
There was never a second to Mom’s
ultimate Easter Morning. It couldn’t be matched if she’d tried. Bobbi and I
started to help with the Egg Rolls at church after that. There was always
Easter Candy around the house for dinner, sometimes even a bunny or two. The
white chocolate was my favorite. Then for many years there were ham dinners and
red-beet eggs to eat, and the confections disappeared until…
Grandchildren. Mom and Dad united
forces as soon as Bobbi’s daughter Katie could crawl. We started indoors for
the first year or two. Then we were outside in the yard – forsythia in full
bloom and tufts of garlic grass waving in the breeze. When my son Woody joined
the fray we heard the I-saw-it-first’s, and whines, and also the laughter of
short people chasing colors and chocolate. The fun even branched out to include
the neighbors’ kids. Plastic eggs reappeared while cleaning up the yard in the
fall.
Finally, on those brisk spring
mornings, Mom had to sit, wrapped in blankets, and referee. She gave audible
clues to the underdogs, and ordered the taller hunters to surrender some plunder
to the shortest basket bearers. It was a charmed day, really. We often stared
in wonder at the children who stopped picking up eggs and took a bumbler’s
hand, saying “look – there’s one!” The chocolate was a sidelight after all.
