Down the Road A Piece – Easter

DOWN THE ROAD A PIECE

When we were little, we loved everything about Easter. We considered it the first day of spring on our Maryland dairy farm. Calves were being born, goslings hatched, and the early garden was planted. Bright yellow Forsythia bushes framed the crocuses, daffodils, and tulips in the barn bridge flower bed.

We saved the palest eggs from our large flock. Mom hard-boiled them, and we spent hours dipping them into the pungent vinegar water colors. On Good Friday, Mom made hot cross buns with currants we had picked the previous summer.

On Easter Sunday, she dressed my twin sister and me in fancy matching dresses and our brother in “church clothes.” Our father always seemed to have something else important to do, which kept him from coming with us.

We walked the mile down Lombard Road to the little brick Methodist church for the special service. On the way we looked for green shoots and wild flowers just beginning to bloom. We said “Happy Easter!” to Mr. Yale as he came out of his barn, smelling of cows and fresh milk. His big Holsteins in the next field stared at our little parade as they lay chewing their cuds after their morning feed.

We and our friends in frilly dresses and little suits squirmed during the sermon and whispered to each other: “Is there really a Holy Ghost?” And, we loved to listen to our Moms sing the hymns they knew so well.

When we got home, we hurried out of our fancy clothes, kicked off the ouchy shoes, and ran downstairs to see if the Easter Bunny had arrived.

Yes, indeed! Three baskets, each with green shredded paper, a little pile of colorful jelly beans and one chocolate bunny sat in the middle of the dining room table with a note:

“In the yard, in the barn, and all around, many eggs and baskets, too, are to be found.”

We tore out of the house, running around looking everywhere, elbowing each other: “I saw it first!” Our Easter Bunny was a master hider. It sometimes took most of the afternoon to find all the eggs and baskets. One year, we decorated two dozen eggs, but despite all our searching, we found only 23. We ate a lot of egg salad the next week.

Everyone kept looking for that elusive egg but to no avail. Much later that summer our father laid back on the comforting slant of the ancient Emperor Paulownias tree to watch us play badminton in the backyard.

Sitting up suddenly, he shouted, “Look what I found!” holding up the still intact missing egg. Amazing! It wasn’t cracked or even smelly. Maybe there is a Holy Ghost after all, we thought.

This year we’ll go to our grandchildren’s house in Bynum for an Easter egg hunt and a picnic afterward. Their Bunny hides plastic eggs with nickels and dimes in them.

Granddaughter Darby, 8, asked me the last time she was over, “Does the Easter Bunny come to your house?” I said, “Not often, anymore. But when I was growing up, our Easter Bunny was the best hider ever!”

Jane D. Brown taught in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media for 35 years and has lived in Chapel Hill since 1977. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocal Reporter.press.