Easter Memories

Easter is next weekend! Late this year..not in March, but in April.  One of my favorite childhood memories of Easter was wearing the beautiful dressy- dresses made especially for me and my sister, Sue, by our wonderful mother, Marie Ellison Head, an excellent seamstress.  Mama made most of our clothes until about junior high, when we decided we wanted clothes "bought off the rack" as our friends had. They were not nearly as good as what Mama made, with all her love for us put into them. Another fond memory was making our own Easter eggs.  After growing up, I realized the importance of the ritual of making  Easter eggs was not the eggs themselves, but making them together, as a family. It was real fun to first boil the egg, then color it with a crayon, making all those different decorations on it, then dipping it in the colorful Paas dyes, to produce an "original' design that no one else had, so when it was "found", you knew it was the one you made. Mama would collect all the Easter eggs we had first hidden, then found in our Easter egg hunt, and make Deviled Eggs, a real treat, for the next few days.  No candy eggs for us! Beside, Mama would not have let us eat all that sugar.  The things we did as kids were simpler than today and were usually done in a family setting. I like to think that is one of the reasons we turned out to be such great folks...we had wonderful guidance.