The smell of vinegar permeated the kitchen, along with the smell of freshly boiled eggs. Not really the smells we crave unless you are about nine years old. Lined up on one of her thin, white dish towels spread across the table top, Mom set the big, white coffee cups filled with boiling water and a bit of vinegar. June popped out the little red, yellow, orange, green and blue tablets, dropping them into the cups and cut designs from the waxy tissue paper imprinted with bunnies, baskets, chickies and perhaps a cute little duck. They also included an egg in those sweet pictures; it never made sense to me why you would imprint an egg on an egg. Nevertheless, the egg coloring event commenced.
I remember June taking the wax stick and imprinting our names on the eggs. We all had our favorite colors thus the name on the named egg met with the chosen colorful bath. She also tried her artistic hand at wax designs. Hers were much better than mine. Hard to draw on an oval egg held in a little hand when the egg rolls as you try to draw on it. Yes, Easter was once more alive in the Loxley kitchen.
Easter was always one of the main events in our family. The egg coloring was important. But one of the highlights for little me was the shopping trip to Greenville to find a new frock. To this day, I still remember the pink dress with the lace trim, the blue dress with a smocked top and the yellow dress with the full skirt. It tied in back. I always had a new chapeau. Well, it was probably the same hat hidden away each year. And, just maybe I got new shoes. It was a rare day when we got new clothes. Obviously true since I remember each and every one. It was the one day that I felt pretty.
As I grew older, I found that the sweetly dressed me discovered solace and warmth in that Easter congregation that surrounded me. It was different on this one Sunday of the year. We sang the hymns that had carried me throughout my life (except when June told me that the words were “up from the gravy He arose). The lilies in the church. The choir singing a choral cantata practiced for weeks just for this special day. We seemed to greet one another with a renewed love. Families had come from all over just to be with their own on Easter, so old friendships were embraced. The church rang with song and love.
Mom, of course, had dinner in the oven just waiting for us to return home. Easter was usually spent with the Johnson’s, bringing their favorite dishes for the celebratory meal. I have a picture of my niece Jobi and my cousin Sue when they were just little girls. In their hands were some of those colored eggs that left the adults with colored fingers.
I cannot look at an Easter without remembering those wonderful traditions and the people who shared them with me. The farm was coming alive with new buds on trees and bulbs promising to open just for this special day. New lambs were in the shed and soon baby chicks would join the menagerie. It was the birth of spring and the love of God for all.
Whatever your belief, I come not to ask you to celebrate Easter with me but to embrace the love that we are all reminded of and the birth of spring. As many the colors of eggs, be they one solid color or a beautiful mix of colors, they are all beautiful in that Easter basket, the unity of love. Today I am blue, red, orange, green and yellow. I am white, black, yellow, tan, slightly apricot and a whole lot love. Happy Spring. Happy Easter. Happy world of so many lovely colors.
