Home for Easter

A week back I pulled out the Easter box from the basement and carefully placed a few springy items around the living room-some painted eggs and bunnies and an Easter basket. These changes of seasons and anticipated holidays create a foundation for our lives- brick by brick - tchotchke by tchotchke - and that foundation can hold us up when life challenges us and the world seems bewildering.

Each item collected holding a memory from whence it came. Each little gift a reminder of thoughtfulness. Maybe that is what gifts are all about- little reminders of the love and the people in our lives. There is no need for high end or luxury. Just the simple, familiar joy that follows us throughout the years.

I used to have an Easter Basket-I think mine was woven with yellow bands. We each had a basket assigned to us. It came out of the attic every year to hold the eggs we all colored and the straw was carefully preserved year to year in knotted plastic bags. To this day, any time of year, the smell of vinegar once added to the coloring immediately summons images of dying Easter eggs.

My mom and the Easter Bunny were in cahoots and we would wake up to a basket filled with candy and a special treat hidden under the straw. One year as a preteen I got the 45 RPM of the Door’s song ‘Touch Me Babe’ -not necessarily an Easter classic but I imagine one of my older sisters had to have been out shopping with my mother and the Easter bunny.

After a healthy dose of jelly beans and the torso of my chocolate bunny we would all get dressed up in our Easter finery- head to toe Easter-and head off to Mass. We all squished into one pew and counted the minutes until the Lyon’s Club big Easter Egg hunt at the park. This was something we looked forward to all year. Back when I was a youngster all of the eggs hidden in the park were real dyed hardboiled eggs. Perhaps it was before the invention or use of plastic eggs. And the very best part was that they were each specially hidden-in nooks of trees, under leaves, around the playground equipment. So, it truly was a real hunt. There were prize eggs to be found but in all my years I never did find one. My little brother did once and he came home with a large stuffed bunny-almost as tall as him- and got his picture in the Express along with all of the other lucky egg hunting champions.

At home my mom prepared an Easter dinner that we try to replicate each year – ham, turkey, potato salad, baked beans, broccoli salad, carrot cake. We’d each get a half-of- grapefruit for an appetizer that my mother prepared with the precision of a surgeon. Once in a while we would have shrimp cocktail and I would sit next to my brother-in-law because I knew he didn’t like shrimp and would occasionally send a couple my way. It was a very small house housing quite a big family. The washer and dryer were in the kitchen and my mom would carefully spread a tablecloth on top of them as our serving table.

It’s funny right? We didn’t know about more-or want more…. there were no episodes of ‘Real Housewives of Sag Harbor’ for us to compare our lives to-just the ‘real housewives’ of Sag Harbor-making sure we each had a dress, shoes and an Easter bonnet for Sunday. We all lived simply and within our means. And yet we all seemed to have just what we needed and needed just what we had. The simple unencumbered small-town utopia ……. home.