What does Easter mean to you?
Easter was my second favorite holiday for many years. In some ways it was my favorite. Easter is a very religious based holiday of course, but it also was a very bunnies and candy based one as well. I dyed Easter eggs way up until I was probably 16 or 17 years old. I always received a new dresses, shoes, hats and gloves until I was like 13 for Church on Sunday. Of Course, I got Easter baskets as in plural form the Easter bunny all the way up until I was 29 years old. I had people in my life that loved me very much and though it was cute how much I loved Easter.
I had so many good memories of Easter. It was the one Holliday I could depend on that Papaw would be around. I mean he was a preacher and we went to his church so we were always together on Easter. Also, Papaw always made a big deal about how pretty I looked in my new clothes. I loved making him happy and I loved looking pretty for him. He would call me his little lady. I would be on cloud 9. Our church was a small country church with of a lot of loggers. I was the only girl my age; the rest were boys and the only other girls were much younger than me. There was a lot of casual dressing at my church. On Easter though, everyone normally dressed up. It was like we were going to a very fancy brunch picnic later on.
Easter just had a special air about it. No, it was not just the fact I would be high on chocolate, and believe you me, I would be extremely high on chocolate. I normally get no less than three baskets filled to the brim of chocolate. To add to that I would get whatever sweet treats Ms. Pauline would have baked up for me. She spoiled me. She had this little tree she would put jelly beans on every year for me. I didn’t really like jelly beans but I would eat them because she did it for me. Her and Momo would love hiding eggs with me. Sometimes I’d bring my eggs and they would hide them with me before church at night. They loved me so much. I never had to ask more than once with them.
The candy… OH my favorite candy has always been the marshmallow covered with chocolate candy. I just love marshmallow candy. Also, anything Hershey especially, the egg-shaped chocolates. Those were perfect to go in my purse for school on Monday. Then when I got older the Reeses Eggs. I liked the solid chocolate bunnies but it would make me so sad to eat them because they were so pretty. It was like destroying art. Somehow after all the other goodies were gone, I would give in and eat the art. Imagine that. I normally got stuffed animals, but sometimes I received books, jewelry, a bible one year, and other random things I had been wanting. As I got older it changed, purses, perfume, sometimes stuffed animals, because I’ll never really grown up. Needless to say, I was spoiled with the secular part of Easter.
While we are on topic of food, my Mom would wake up supper early on Sunday morning and she would prepare the pork roast, potatoes, carrots with onions into the crock pot and put it onto a slow cook. She would make corn bread, pink salad (a desert of the ages) and Mash-potatoes because I didn’t like the potatoes in the roast, and sometimes corn on the cob, and string beans. Then she would make pancakes for breakfast. My house would smell amazing on Easter morning. The roast was our traditional Easter dinner. It doesn’t feel like Easter with out roast. Pink Salad is my favorite desert to date. I literally can’t make the stuff with out knowing I’m going to eat the entire bowl. My friends have named it pink crack. I agree. You just can’t stop.
Easter also was always special because we kids got to do a Easter program at church. I was pretty shy but I knew my Papaw enjoyed when we did little skits for church, so I didn’t mind doing them. I always tried my best. I tried to swallow my shyness and just let my love for my Papaw push me forward. Then after our skit Papaw would preach. It was normally the only time I would hear my Papaw raise his voice. Like Easter Sunday was more important day for people to understand what he was saying than any other Sunday. Maybe Papaw was a little shy too and his love for God was pushing him forward on this special day? What ever it was I remember listing a bit closer on Easter Sundays. But to that may also be because I was just so thankful, we were alive…
So, the two things about Easter I did not like, other than the week leading up to Easter break, was every one calling me Easter at school, and the fact I started worrying about God coming back to earth and the world ending. I’m not sure how I came to the conclusion it would be on Easter or why, but that was what I got put in my head some where along the line and it terrified me each and every Easter. Can you imagine how I felt this year? I have tired to think about where I got this notion from and for the life of me, I have no idea where it came from. All I know is it used to be such a terrible fear, and I would make my self sick with worry every year as a kid. One year I got brave enough to tell my Papaw and I think he told me what he told me to calm my nerves, but he said, God would never come back when you expect him to. He is a man of surprises. In some ways that did it. That calmed me down and I was at piece about Easter and it moved into my favorite holiday slot.
It is so wonderful to have memories so vivid and so alive in my head. My biggest fear in life is to lose my memories of these moments. The moments that there is no one to remember them but me. Easter was so special to me. I literally could write so many things about Easter. I didn’t even mention how Papaw spent hours and hours hunting eggs with me and how it seemed to rain every Easter, so we would have to hunt them in the house. So many memories – one blog post is not enough. I hope that your reading this, something I have said may triggered a positive memory for you. A memory you had forgotten or a memory you had filed away. If you don’t have any of these types of memories, I am so sorry. Hopefully some Easter you can make some special memories of your own. Easter at the end of the day is about love. A love so deep and grand that a man would die on the cross a terrible death, and arise again to go and be the One who hears our prayers, feels our sadness, shares our joys and our griefs. So, I hope this Easter you feel love so great that you know you are loved!
XOXO
Finding Evie 