Pale yellow, lilac, pink, aqua, and beige – all these soft colors remind Delaine and me of Easter because our mother had very strict rules about what was acceptable for her daughters. Navy was not even allowed; we were adorned in the colors traditionally associated with spring and enticing Easter eggs.
And if you are old school, you know that there is always a cold snap before Easter, so our mother always made us spring dusters. We loved them because if our spring coats were white, she always used a soft contrasting color for the lining. Those beloved dusters were dutifully worn on Palm Sunday and Easter mornings. I distinctly remember when we lived in Florence, we wore our dusters to sunrise service at Timrod Park. I can almost see the blooms of the azaleas and hear the birds tweeting.
Another tradition was that my daddy, a United Methodist minister, always invited Claflin University choir to our church, Cumberland United Methodist Church, for a spring concert.
As to Easter speeches, Delaine and I did not have the luxury of being shy. We were assigned speeches which we not only had to memorize, but we practiced and practiced so that we would say them well. (Do you think we had a choice with a minister as a father and an English teacher as a mother?) And, we had to say our speeches twice – once in Florence then again at Big Mama’s (our mother’s mother) house in Cheraw in the afternoon.
We love, love, love the Easter season, and the health department will just have to retroactively arrest the elders of the church because when we hunted Easter eggs, we hunted real boiled eggs, not pieces of egg shaped paper that children trade in for real eggs and not plastic eggs filled with candy.
Our most lasting Easter memory pertains to our cousin Mickey who lives in Cheraw. Our parents always bought us dyed Easter biddies – Delaine liked blue, and I liked pink (real ones, not marshmallow biddies), snow white bunnies, or adorable ducklings for Easter. (Never mind the fact that Delaine was and still is afraid of birds – she still had to have a biddy.)
Because we thought of Mickey as our brother, one year we asked our parents to also buy Mickey a duckling. We delivered Mickey his duckling, and he took excellent care of his duckling for months. Normally, those Easter pets didn’t live very long. One day we went to Big Mama’s house, and we wanted to see how Mickey’s duckling was coming along. We said, “Mickey, where’s your duck?” He said, “In the house.” We said, “In the house? Big Mama let you bring your duck in the house??!” Mickey, said, “Go in the house, you’ll see it.” We were so excited as we asked Big Mama to show us the duck. She said, “It’s in the pot.” We said, “In the pot?!” Mickey had raised his duckling into a meal!! We were strange at times, but we never turned out pets into a meal.
Whether you have special Easter traditions or not, we wish you joy and peace this Easter season; just don’t entrust your ducklings to a cousin like Mickey.
