Butter Upping to Easter

Easter was never about Jesus to us scrawny egg headed heathens, we'd run around in itchy dress clothes, wide-eyed and goofy looking for marshmallow chicks hidden in the house way before Granma arrived. Aunts and mothers made food in the kitchen, none that we liked except for chocolate pie. It seemed like forever before we could change into our play clothes and move on with the hunt, the required croquet games and finally one doozy of an easter dinner.

Together we were one team, a family of circumstance and being anything other than this was not even in our twitty little brains back then. Our feet were squished into dress shoes likely too small as no one had money to get new spring shoes. In the warm sun we'd kneel on the concrete patio drawing with coloured chalk trying not to "get dirty" before Granma saw us. Easter was, in my memory, more about Granma and boiled eggs than rising from the dead.

I recall Uncle Billy-goat was always walking funny and brought his own cooler. He'd pull out a nylon strung lounge chair and plop smack dab in the middle of the yard and drink can after can of his own favorite beverage. Sometimes he'd yell out something incomprehensible to us but rarely did we go near him. Of course I know now it wasn't RC cola.

Somebody would yell from an open window, "Granma's here" and we'd all run to greet her, show off our pretty clothes and walk her to the outside table where it was all set and ready with pre-dinner snacks, iced-tea and Hawaiian Punch. Granma and the adults would order us cousins into the basement so we couldn't cheat while the hunt was set up. Between us kids it was also a time where we separated greedily, looked at each other with competitive stares and became instantaneous foes.

We all knew one thing, Granma coloured her own chicken's eggs and did so way in advanced. They were always boiled hard and green inside. She made dozens of them, too. Luckily we had one or two aunties who filled plastic eggs with peanuts or red-hots or if lucky a tiny chocolate egg wrapped in colourful foil. Luck doesn't solve everything though, now does it?

*In the now, carpe diem*

My cousin Ellen will be disqualified if she removes her brutally tight yellow dress; the zipper doesn't even make it to her neck. My mother offered her a hand-me-down for this year but she refused, that is stubborn Ellen for ya. So, HA! I'll be faster as I grew taller not wider.

Tom, well he's fast but has no eye for detail. I hope he winds up with the most of Granma's eggs. By the time we show off our baskets the sun will have been on those gassy explosives for a good two hours.

The smallest of us, Maria, I feel a wee sorry for as she just joined our family from foster care and I would hate for her to be the one who gets the belly ache when we settle in to watch Granma's required "Easter Parade" with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. No one wants to be near the cousin who expels their indulgences. We all will eat devilled eggs at dinner so the sum of our total egg intake is quite high.

Now I've noticed over the years Granma likes high grass and rolling her eggs into the ditches. She probably does this because she can't completely bend over nor reach a nook in the tall trees lining the driveway.

One year I found an egg in the mailbox; that was clever and it was peanut butter, melted of course, but still not boiled.

The basement door swings open and Uncle Billy-goat whistles loudly using his fingers to his lips. SPRUNG! We fly out the door and hear Granma calling out "too cold", "hot, hot, hot" and I run opposite of her hints as it's likely leading to one of the boiled and sun baked ones.

I peer into the budding forsythia and see a bright pink, plastic egg. Score! I crawl on all fours around the edges of the house and find two more. I pass Tom who has an overflowing basket which means he very likely listened to Granma, hee-hee.

Little Maria looks lost so I guide her tiny hand toward the patches of daffodils sprouting up and tap my finger on an egg with a prize of sorts inside; one can tell the store bought eggs right off the bat from Granma's and she grins shyly.

Ellen begins following me and I know I am in for it. I play stupid and intentionally miss two real eggs knowing Ellen will grab them up. Just as the hunt is about to wind down I open the mailbox remembering that mushy peanut butter egg from last year and am jinxed. I got one of Granma's. It's dyed bluish green and really is quite pretty.

We all meet on sheets spread out on the lawn around Granma's chair and show her our baskets with photos in our pretty clothes not being optional. Uncle Billy-goat has dressed up in his Easter bunny costume but his breath stinks when he leans in to have his picture taken with us.

Now the egg count! Tom comes in first with twenty eggs, over half of them boiled, YES! Ellen comes in second with fourteen and approximately six boiled, YES! I come in third with eleven eggs but only two boiled, YES! And little Maria has three eggs and none are boiled. AWW! I offer her one of my boiled eggs gingerly and Granma thinks I am so sweet to share. Tom eyes me knowing exactly what I am up to.

Granma watches us slowly peel her colourful eggs with great joy. That first bite is the worst. I nip off the pointy tip of the oval shaped nugget, it's greyish and dry and I quickly wash it down fast with a slug of punch. Now the green part is showing. I think lots about where the egg comes from and feel nauseous; hens have one hole for everything. This eggy obsession makes my throat feel thick and I think I might vomit. No, I am sure I will. I take one more bite and up it comes, splat, at Granma's feet.

Everyone makes a huge fuss, Granma says I have some kind of bug and I am whisked away to be checked for fever. HA!

I feel really bad for Maria out there about to have her first old chicken butt egg on her own though.

My mother sticks a thermometer full of mercury under my tongue hard and eyes the second hand on her wrist-watch. She sighs, "Poor baby". Wait, what? I really do have a fever? I'm burning up. Granma is called in to inspect my ill young body and puts cold wash cloths on my forehead and the back of my neck. Is this really happening? They put me in a reclining chair after I wiggle out of my itchy dress and I'm given cold mint tea with lots of sugar to sip. Now the cousins are all rolling in and staring at me in disbelief.

My cousin Ellen is begging to take off her dress and is shushed away and pouts from the doorway just as my cousin Tom says he feels a bit queasy, too. Is he fibbing? Nope. He turns pale and runs to the toilet hurling. Oh no! Granma is on him like a hawk on a field mouse and it's so happening!

The aunties all sigh and the uncles stay far away from us sipping their smelly canned beverages and shaking their heads.

Back in the kitchen the ham is done, smothered in something sweet with pineapples all over it. Ellen and Maria get to eat at the table with the grown-ups while Tom and I convalesce, for half an hour we were arch rivals yet now feeling sorry for ourselves as despite dodging rotten eggs, we are green with envy as our cousins get chocolate pie and bite into their chocolate bunnies, ears first.

Later, after everyone but us plays croquet Granma turns on the "Easter Parade" and everyone settles down. Maria looks at Ellen with a scrunched up nose and moves further away from her on the raggedy, shag carpet. Tom and I laugh; Ellen is the stink-bomb this year. Candy can wait, but the after effects of Granma's eggs are as much of a tradition as Judy Garland.

Click here for the music and lyrics to Easter Parade!