Easter (Last Installment in This Series)

Before Easter, my mother kept her eye on the incubator, which stood like a thick table in the screened breezeway between our house and the smokehouse. She candled chicken eggs and duck eggs with a flashlight. Inevitably, an egg or two went bad, and, if not caught in time, left an unpleasant odor even after removal. All of this occurred back when I was in grade school.

Completing My Easter Sunday Wardrobe

With a Pair of Hollywood Celebrity Sunglasses

Memories of Easter crowd my mind. Every day when I walked home from the public school across the highway, I lingered beside hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips that my mother had planted as a border between the driveway and the white board fence surrounding the yard. The variety among the daffodils appealed to my artistic sense. Yellow, white, and orange. Tall and short. Large blossoms and small blossoms. The variations were many, making it difficult to choose a favorite. I delighted in the heavy perfume of the hyacinths, and I loved the delicate fragrance of tulips—a fragrance reminding me of Easter candy.

She may have taken her inspiration from a magazine, or she may have developed the idea from her own creativity, but my mother wrapped two cylindrical Quaker Oats boxes in green aluminum foil, glued construction paper decorations on the foil, slipped a stuffed bunny toy inside each box, and ornamented the lids with foil and bows. She claimed that the Easter Bunny himself had left the boxes for my brother and me. I kept my rabbit toy for many years, but, eventually, I must have lost interest in it before losing it altogether. I wish I had it now.  

There is one memory that tops the rest. In my bed at sunrise on Easter morning, I gradually awoke from my dreams because of a persistent peeping. As the nights were still cold, I had pulled the covers up to my chin. Dancing on my head were tiny feet. As my eyes opened, I saw my mother’s face nearby. She was smiling that beautiful smile that time cannot erase from my recollections. Her hands were stretched protectively toward the fuzzy yellow duckling that was peeping and sprinting across my forehead.

“You can hold it, but be careful not to squeeze it,” my mother invited. I slipped up into a seated posture and lightly held the duckling between my hands. It had just been born in the incubator and was full of life. My joy knew no bounds!

To this day, when I think of Easter, I think of that duckling and my mother sitting on the edge of my bed. She passed away in 1988, but I trust that she is full of life, smiling, and raising chicks and ducklings in a dimension just beyond my dreams.