Nora was only a few weeks old last Easter, but this year she proudly walked around for all to see her Easter outfit!  Her Dad held her proudly as he brought her into our church's Easter breakfast wearing all the special clothes her Mommy had assembled for her. We were amazed how long the hat stayed on her dark haired head.  Later, at home when her shoes and stockings were given up for sweet bare feet, her hat traded for bunny ears. I looked around at the gathering her parents had assembled - fond grandparents, aunts, uncles, and proud cousin, and remembered a sweet line from a Fernando Ortega song called "This Time Next Year."

"... hold her high, because we are lifted in her laughter!"  

posted with gratitude to Ben and Kristen and Nora, and also to Nora's other grandmother, Desiree, who outdid herself cooking our Easter brunch. 

Not About the Rabbits

Recently a topic of conversation in a group of women friends: "What Easter stories or memories come to mind?"

I thought about Easters in the seventies when we decorated and hid eggs for our three little boys, dressed them up and took them to church and to visit grandparents. I thought about Easters in the past 15 years when I found just the right Easter dress to delight first one, then two, three, four, and now five sweet granddaughters! I smiled when I pictured the fun we have had with our little boys and these little girls decorating eggs, cookies, and cakes, and gathering our growing family around Grandma Terrell's dining table in our home.  Which led me to think of that same table surrounded by my grandparents, parents, my sister and me, and sometimes others.  Always my sister and I proudly wore Easter dresses sewed by Mother.  Often we had a coat, hat, and purse to match!  Those little girl Easters always included going to an outdoor Easter sunrise service in a rock ampitheater.  Those red rocks made for hard, cold seating and shivering little girls in the early hours.

I thought about all the Easter baskets and Easter bunnies these memories represent, including this stern looking celluloid blue and white bunny that was mine in 1941, my very first Easter.  I have no recollection of that Easter, of course, but the fact that this odd little rattle was something Mother kept and passed on to me is significant.  She remembered.

Remembering is really what matters after all. In all the little signs and symbols of Easter there is one common thread, one reason for each:  to help us remember. We remember that Christ came, that he lived to show us how to live, was crucified, laid in a grave, and that he rose on the third day.  We sing the Easter songs and celebrate with joy because we remember.

We practice resurrection and redemption.  Happy Easter!

Easter 2014

In recent years, Lent resolving into Holy Week and Easter has become rich with ritual and remembering for me, but it is always a time of remembering  Easters in the 1940's, when I was a little girl.

  Mother sewed new dresses for my sister and me, which  inevitably wound up being hidden under coats as we made our way to the Sunrise Service held. in our hometown.  This service was early, and happened at a place called Love's Lookout where there was a large ampitheatre formed from  red rock, a WPA project. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era Works Progress Administration came to the hill in the 1930s and, using red rock mined from Cherokee County, built a park, picnic grounds and an amphitheater used for these sunrise services, plays and other events.

The scenic bluff which was the location of  the ampitheatre was named to honor Wesley Love who in 1904 bought much of the surrounding area and planted a 600-acre peach farm. After Love's death in 1925, his wife donated 22 acres to the state for a state park. The state, however, failed to create the park and in 1934 the City of Jacksonville purchased an additional 20 acres and developed the two tracts as a city park. That's when the Works Progress Administration began its project.

In the Spring, dogwoods and other spring flowers are in bloom, making the setting even more beautiful.  I remember shivering on the cold hard semicircle of rock on which we sat, but I loved this sunrise service, with its gathering of Christians from many area churches, the joy of singing "Christ Arose" and Alleluia, the feelings of newness and festivity in our Easter clothes, and our family traditions that would follow:  church services at First Baptist Church, Easter Sunday dinner which would included having grandparents at our house or going to theirs.  There was baked ham, potato salad, new potatoes with green beans put up in Mason jars, Jello salads and sometimes Coconut cake or pie - all homemade and delicious.  I can almost smell the vinegar we used for die to color boiled eggs the day before so that we could hide them over and over again on Sunday afternoon.

Today our family includes some version of many of the same traditions as those I loved 70 years ago, but
we have added to these a deeper awareness of the season of Lent, and more intentional observance of Holy Week.  Our church for 22 years now, First Baptist Church in Richmond, Texas is where we gather for services such as one we attended last night, Tenebrae.  The church  has a prayer garden with a small labyrinth where chairs will be set up for a Sonrise service tomorrow morning followed by breakfast with our church family served from dishes made with eggs and sausage made at home and brought as families arrive. There will be an egg hunt for children.  I will sing in the choir and ring with the handbell choir as we express joy and praise with some of the same hymns I sang with my family all those years ago.  Then we come back here to our house with all of our sons and their wives and children who can be here.  That will include our newest granddaughter, sweet Nora Opal, who is exactly one month old and celebrating her very first Easter.

Alleluia.

All the Easter Dresses

One of the many things I love about this time leading up to Easter is the re-emergence of color as seeds sprout and flowers return to bloom.  When I was growing up in East Texas, the dark wintertime evergreen woods began to dot with dogwood and redbud trees. Daffodils and narcissus and azaleas drifted across front yards. And little girls and their mothers planned Easter dresses!  I am not sure the above photo was the Easter dress the year I was three, but it might have been.  And it would most certainly have been made by my mother on her Singer sewing machine although I suspect the crocheted lace on that collar would have been crocheted by my grandmother.

Stitches in Time

at Christmastime I hang a wreath, braided circle of  cloth

 made almost half a century ago from scraps found in my fabric stash

one strand of the braid is green velvet

bits left from creating a dress

with beaded cummerbund that circled my then tiny waist

a second strand cut from scraps of snow white brocaded cotton

my high school graduation dress

woven  with the green and white is red corduroy,

my first maternity dress

there would have been nothing left to make the wreath if not for first

 you,

the sewing

and the clothes.

I remember sundresses, circle skirts with petticoats, pleated skirts,

tucked blouses, mandarin jackets, peter pan collars,

puffed sleeves, vests, and weskits

a squaw dress and a poodle skirt

all made after I helped pick a pattern

Simplicity, McCall's, Vogue

you even collected last year's pattern books

from fabric shops where we bought

yards of gingham, calico, organdy, dotted swiss,

eyelet, dimity, poplin, corduroy, worsted and flannel

I remember plaids, checks, polka dots and stripes

pin-wale, herringbone, and tweed

one of a kind made just for me

a red checked dress for a play

always a new dress for first day of school

pink eyelet with ruffles for my piano recital

black suit with red velvet bow for my ride

 in the parade as a duchess

school dresses and play clothes

Sunday clothes, Easter outfits, nightgowns

I remember prom dresses -

clouds of billowing scarlet chiffon,

net the color of hyacinths, shiny satin

pale pink organza, and creamy peau de soie

bolts of rustling taffeta and black velvet

sacks of heavy ribbon and lace

measured with a yardstick on a cutting table

in a shop that was more fun than a candy store

by then I could sketch my dress and it happened!

I remember hours you spent preparing cloth, spreading it

with tissue patterns, cutting with pinking shears

the love that bent you over the humming Singer

with its one tiny bright light

when you said “let's try this on” and tucked

at my waist or lengthened a hem

I don't remember smiling and saying “thank you”

I hope that I did

 I did learn to sew

 I remember when I designed and made my wedding dress

you were proud to help me sew on pearls

I remember writing letters to tell you how my 3 little boys

played when I tried to sew

one standing behind me with his arms

around my neck

And when my granddaughter wanted a princess gown

we picked out a pattern and she helped me cut and sew

I remembered how you made me feel like a princess.

Sad only because you could no longer remember any of it.

Mary Ann Teal Parker  March 23, 2013

Written for my mother, Opal Auntionette Terrell Teal

who suffered from Alzheimer's the last years of her life,

 and died in 2006, one month short of her 93^rd birthday