Easter Sunday then and now

Today has been just like any day here in my place in the city. 

My family members went to church, some for two services because they sing in the choir. I don't go to church because churches are the most air polluted places on Easter and most holidays. With all the lilies and all the perfume and cologne that is worn, I would have an attack.  My bronchial tubes would spasm and I could not breathe. But, I can watch the same service tonight when I tune in to the Alpharetta Presbyterian Church on YouTube. 

The pastor just returned from Ireland where he and his wife visited their daughter. Although fully vaccinated, the pastor caught COVID. He said he had very mild symptoms. He is back with us now and I look forward to hearing him speak.

I look back on my childhood when my mother made sure I never missed attending church on Easter. Gay and I always had new dresses and dress-up shoes to wear. The church we attended was called Beulah Methodist and was located on the edge of a pine forest on a dirt road in Worth County. I enjoyed Sunday School because I liked our teachers, but I hated having to sit through a sermon by a big red-faced man in the pulpit. I can't remember ever hearing a preacher who spoke in a normal voice. They all yelled at us. They slammed their hands, and the bible sometimes, on the lectern. I wondered why the preachers were so angry at all the people who came to church. I knew I had not done anything bad, at least nothing that shouting-man knew about. 

I often tuned out the preacher and focused on a bird singing outside or a wasp that had come in through the open windows. It buzzed around the ceiling and, at times, was right over the preacher. I almost laughed out loud when I imagined what would happen if that wasp dropped down on the angry man's head. 

Lisa, Lee, and Lyn, my little nieces
absolutely adorable

I looked forward to the Easter Egg hunt held after church. Gay and I and the other girls were not dressed for climbing through the long grass and over downed pine limbs. We had no nice smooth lawn at the church. The front yard was dirt, not a blade of grass, so the eggs had to be hidden in the woods. Gay and I were very young, maybe four and six, and I was a little more assertive than my little sister. I held her hand and pulled her along with me, but there was a neighbor boy a little older than I who always found the most eggs. He crowed about it. I wanted to smash his basket against a tree. But we knew we had another Easter Egg hunt when we got home.

The hunting was much better there and we had no competition. We had awakened to find pretty pastel baskets beside our beds. A chocolate rabbit nestled in the green fake grass. Our hunt was over quickly and then all the family gathered for dinner around the big dining table. With four older brothers there, Mother prepared a huge meal. She was amazing in the kitchen. We always had homemade biscuits which she rolled out by hand, several vegetables, pork roast or roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Everyone drank sweet iced tea except Daddy who drank from his large cup of coffee with milk at every meal.  

Easter was always a time for the family to gather at Mother and Daddy's house even after we were all grown. Eventually, we had to add more tables as my siblings' families grew. The Easter Egg hunts became a ritual with all my nieces and nephews. While they hunted on the front lawn, we adults stood on the front porch and watched. Memories of those times will forever be stamped in my mind. The family was important to my parents and to all of us in my generation. I think it is still important to most of my nieces and nephews, some who are now grandparents. 

Mother in her apron on the far left with other family members on the porch, all of whom are gone now.

I hope you, my readers, have had a wonderful day wherever you are. I hope that Easter heralds Spring is coming soon to my area.

Leave a comment or send an email if you have memories of Easters past. I love to hear from you.

Easter Sunday

I always think of Easter as the beginning of life.

On this day we begin again, our lives, and think about what we can do with them. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and it brings back memories of Easter when I was a child and when I was a young adult. Whether Gay and I were going to the little country church with our neighbors or waking up to find the Easter Bunny had come, Easter was a special time of the year.

 

I remember the cellophane covered Easter baskets beside my bed when I awoke. But I remember most the stuffed rabbits my sister and I received. One year my rabbit was really big and with the prettiest long white satin ears. Well, they were white on the inside and pink and furry on the outside. I kept that rabbit so long I took it to college with me and slept with it. It helped when I was miserable with homesickness.

 

Recently I found in my collection of VHS tapes, one made by my dear brother, Ray. He had recorded family gatherings for several years. At least two or three were of my nieces and nephews and their children hunting for Easter Eggs on the big front lawn in front of my parents' home. The Easter Egg hunt there became a tradition that has lasted for fifty years, I guess. I don't know if it goes on today, but I imagine it does.

Three precious little girls in Easter dresses

 



Mother, in her apron, stood on the front porch and watched the kids hunt eggs. Barry and his brother, Richard, stand between my brothers Hal and Rex. Looking cute in fancy overalls is Yvonne, Hal's wife.

All the little ones were dressed in their finest clothes. The girls had frilly dresses and the boys wore little suits and ties. How cute they were as they carried baskets bigger than they were while mothers tried to help them see the eggs hidden in plain sight. On Ray's recording, the third generation of Council kids repeated the actions of their mothers and fathers. But in these films Mother was not standing on the front porch watching as she had done back in the sixties. She was either sick or gone by the time these recordings were made.

 

Barry and I sang in the choir down in Albany and then in Hayesville Presbyterian here in the mountains. The hymns for Easter were joyful and uplifting. I can't explain that feeling, but I found myself smiling when I sang and listened to the voices around me. As Joe Perrone, Jr  says in his post this week about music, it brings back memories and takes us back to places and times we will never forget.

 

Hayesville Presbyterian Church in Hayesville, NC where I spent many happy hours
with good friends

 

I don't go to church on Easter anymore because of the flowers, the perfume and fragrances that would trigger an asthma attack or send me into a brain fog such as I suffered early this week. For four days I was in bed or on the couch, hardly strong enough to make meals for myself and feed Lexie. This was a result of sitting in a room with over twenty  people for four hours even as I enjoyed being there. All it takes is a small exposure to a chemical fragrance to make me ill. I have heard that on a Sunday morning, a church has more air pollution than any other place in America. There are very few progressive enough to ask congregations to refrain from wearing scented products to church. But in some countries and in some areas of the United States, this is done.

 

I learned from a good friend who is responsible for flowers in her church that she pulls the stamens out of all the lilies before putting them out. The priest was allergic to them, so that is how they eliminated the problem for him.

 

I will not go to church tomorrow, but I have been invited by a dear friend to have lunch with her. I will certainly enjoy that. Today another special friend and neighbor brought me some of her delicious chicken noodle soup and fresh baked banana bread. I'd say my weekend is going well.

 

If you are one who prays, please remember my friends, Ginny and Rob, who face surgery in the coming days. They are very dear to me.

 

Hope your Easter is happy and you get lots of chocolate bunnies in your basket.

 

 

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Easter Sunday back then and now

When I was a small child I usually went to church with our neighbors on Easter Sunday. It was understood that girls had to have new Easter Dresses, fluffy skirts, sashes that tied in back in a big bow, socks with lace on top, so my sister, Gay, and I always had a lovely outfit. Mother wanted us to look our best when we walked in with our neighbors. 

She didn’t go to church with us. Daddy had been insulted, he thought, by the folks at the country church we attended. Mother quit going when he convinced her he would never go back. She said she couldn’t lie anymore about why he didn’t come with her. Having grown up in the church, she wanted her little girls to have that experience, but not badly enough to take us. I wished she would.

Beulah Methodist Church sat quietly in a patch of loblolly and long leaf pines, a white one-story wooden structure with no frills; no stained glass or special accoutrements. The windows of this church were usually open so we could have a breath of a breeze in sizzling summers of south Georgia. Most of the time I gazed out of one of those windows and daydreamed. I could be distracted by a bird on a limb or a wasp that buzzed in and bumped along the ceiling or dropped down to crawl along the top of a pew.

Jarred from my reverie, my mind skittered back to the sermon only when the sweating, balding man at the pulpit slammed his fist on the lectern or raised the Bible in his chubby hand and yelled at us, “Read the Good Book, and follow the words of Jeee-sus!” 

Guilt ran up my spine because I knew he was talking to me. He had caught me daydreaming, I thought, and now he was mad at me. If this man was a representative of God, as he said, then I was scared to death of God. 

On Easter Sunday, while the preacher was speaking, someone or several someones, hid colored eggs in the woods around the bare church yard. We had to bring a half dozen eggs to contribute to the hunt that took place as soon as possible after the last hymn was sung and the last Amen.

This was a real hunt, more difficult than searching out a lost calf or pig. No manicured lawn or even a field with mixed grasses awaited us kids. We had to climb over downed limbs, wade through weeds and grass up to our knees or higher. Piney woods usually have an understory of short bushy plants and tall grass. Around the church the ground was sandy and collected into my new patent leather shoes as I led my shy sister in trying to find some eggs. 

Our neighbor boy hurtled into the woods, intent, along with his sisters, on finding the most eggs. There must have been a prize, but I don’t remember. I know neither Gay nor I ever won. We were careful to protect our new dresses and new shoes and socks. How can pretty little girls compete with a rowdy boy? He didn’t have to spend a minute thinking about where he walked or ran, whether or not he would get dirty, or whom he pushed aside to get the next hidden surprise. I was not too disappointed, just irritated at his arrogance over winning.

Gay and I had our own little egg hunt at home, after we opened our cellophane wrapped Easter baskets filled with candy. Of course we were told the Easter Bunny brought us the baskets. One year the Easter Bunny brought me a large stuffed rabbit, a blue one. We never fell for the hype about a hare coming into our house with presents, but we did believe in Santa Claus as long as we could get away with it. 

Mother made sure the Easter Bunny found us, in one way or another, as long as we lived at home, but we did finally grow up and left. By then we had nieces and nephews. They came with their parents before our big meal and enjoyed the egg hunt on the front lawn.

They were all near the same age and made a cute group in their brand new outfits, their hair slicked down, and feet covered with new shoes. Mother left the kitchen and joined her children on the front porch, the best viewing area for the hunt.  

Stan, my brother-in-law, kept his camera handy, following his two girls around. He captured the faces making happy sounds as well as the crying kid who found no eggs at those Easter Sunday gatherings during the sixties and seventies.

Kaiki, Lee and Lyn - cute little girls in Easter dresses

If I were to go back to that house, and if I were to stand on the front porch on Easter Sunday morning, I’m sure I’d hear the voices of my family members, most of them gone now, talking, laughing, and I’d see them the way I remember them – young and filled with hope and promise for the future, filled with love for their little ones who shared and divided up the colorful eggs in their baskets.

Some of my family members on an Easter Sunday before I married