Easter...I Can Remember When...

Easter has been and always will be a special time in my life. There is of course the religious aspect of Easter and its wondrous representations, but there is also that other part of Easter that the younger me loved so much. The beautiful flowers adorning the Church, the sometimes new but always special Easter clothes we so proudly wore, and then there was the Easter baskets with the green, pink, purple or red grass for the Easter eggs to nestle down into.

We would all go to the Church in all its glory and us dressed in our best. Then we would head home in anticipation of our usual Easter get together at Mama Mae Delle and Papa Dan's house in Blanket, Texas. We hit the house like a tornado and the clothes that we so proudly wore to Church were thrown all over the bedroom. With our five Easter baskets wedged behind the back seat, blocking any view Pop might have in his rear view mirror, we were off to Blanket.

As we walked into the old house we were greeted with the most wonderful smell of the Easter meal along with multiple deserts Mama Mae Delle had prepared. All the cousins on Mom's side of the family would be there and the excitement of the day built as Mama Mae Delle, Mom and my two aunts started getting the table set. Papa Dan, Pop, and my two uncles would sit outside (usually smoking) and us kids were running to and fro anxious to get the show on the road.

We would finally be called in to eat and it was marvelous, the food, the jokes, the laughter, and for us kids, the anticipation of 'the hunt'. After the meal we were told to go back outside and play while the women cleaned up the kitchen. I really don't remember how old we were before we finally figured out why the men would all disappear at the same time and then reappear just in time for us to leave for our big Easter egg hunt. Sure nuff, no sooner had the men returned from where they had been , and we were told to grab our Easter basket and load 'em up.

It was about a three mile drive out in the country and then the caravan pulled up to a closed gate. Papa Dan would get out, open the gate and motion for us to all pull in. I can remember the scene like it was yesterday. There was an old windmill setting there on the side of a beautiful hill, it's blades tuning as it pumped water into a large trough. There were a few old live oak trees spotted across the hill side, with a perfect mixing of colorful spring flowers. The grass was beginning to green up and there were patches of cactus that were also beginning to bloom. It seems like to me the sky was always blue with a few puffy clouds occasionally floating by.

Scattered among the natural beauty of the hillside, was the multiple colors of the Easter eggs. The would be a mixture of real hard boiled eggs along with the candy eggs wrapped in plastic wrappers. It was understood that the easy eggs (the ones left in almost plain site) were for the younger kids and us older kids were going to have to work for our prizes. The signal was given and we were off to the hunt. There would always be plenty of eggs for everyone, but to see the urgency of our quest you would think our survival depended on this hunt.

I would end up with a few of the real hard boiled eggs but would always end up with a mountain of the candy eggs. I'm not talking the chocolate or marshmallow filled delights of later days, I'm talking hard color coated white stuff, kind of shaped like an egg. For something that was such a protected prize, I sure disliked their taste. I really don't remember ever eating more than one bite of these eggs and from the number of half eaten candy eggs I remember left laying here and there, I wasn't the only one.

A lot of the people who made this memory so close to my heart are gone now, but as with Easter and for what it stands, they will always be part of me and for that I am thankful.