Easter Memories

England, 1936

My childhood Easters took place in the sixties.  For me, they were magical -- all about my new outfit, egg coloring, the Easter egg hunt, the Easter bunny who I believed made his rounds on an oversized tricycle, discovering my beautiful basket, the deliciously fresh bread with eggs peeking out baked by my parents the night before, and a painfully long morning church service spent admiring a fragrant lily-covered altar and, most especially, my shiny shoes (the year I was allowed to wear white fishnets was monumental). 

Betsy McCall does Easter in the sixties

A little-known fact about me and Easter features Girl Scout cookies.  An avid scout with badges up the wazoo, I knock knock knocked on neighbors' doors, anxious to fill in every line on that order form.  When the boxes were at last delivered, it was Lent, and that meant that the reward of all of that selling had to be delayed until Easter...I gave up sugar each year during those interminably long forty days. 

Every night, while my family snacked on their mint, peanut butter or shortbread cookies, I would stash my fair share in a plastic bag and hide them under my bed.  The bag was bulging with cookies, when upon waking on Easter, I would slide my hand under the bed and grab it with ferocity.  Right there, right then, I would dig in.  I had to get the deed done early, because we weren't allowed to eat for an hour before receiving Communion.  Such deceitful planning for an eight-year-old!

This year I've put out the familiar Easter decorations, and have the basket nearly ready for my teenager.  Even though he hasn't received stuffed bunnies and lambs for years, his basket tomorrow will include an awfully cute (albeit grown up) stuffed zebra perched among the other goodies in the faux grass -- the mascot at his new school this coming September. And so the magic continues...

A Happy Easter, friends!