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.

Lincoln's Birthday

In 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act established three-day weekends for all major holidays and annual commemorations. In many states, Presidents Day became associated with one of the weekends. Before 1971, my hometown in Indiana celebrated Lincoln’s Birthday on the 12th of February and Washington’s Birthday on the 22nd of the same month. (The 22nd is an adjustment made when the country switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, which is explained on several websites.) When I was in grade school, we took time to honor Lincoln on his day and to honor Washington on his.

A Pencil Sketch of President Abraham Lincoln

That I Drew in 1965—Similar to My Pastel Portrait

That Won the School Art Contest

Every year, the art teacher invited the junior high and high school students to make portraits of Lincoln that were judged, with the announcement of the winner during the Republican Lincoln Day Dinner in the gymnasium. Several of the older students were blessed with artistic talent and skill, and their portraits of Lincoln were exceptional. The best of the best were displayed in the cafeteria, and I admired them. When I was in seventh grade, I was determined to create a portrait that could compete with those of the high school students. I chose pastel chalk as my medium, and I spent hours and hours meticulously forming Lincoln’s face. I refused to permit myself to hurry (my natural tendency), and I devoted many evenings to the slow development of my art. I compared several images of Lincoln that I had collected at school. My portrait was not a direct copy of any one of them but a compilation of features I observed in several of them.

As my mother spoke glowingly to me about my finished work, I developed confidence that I could enter my portrait of Lincoln in the contest. Even though my mother had reassured me, I was shocked through and through when the art teacher confided in me that my art had won the competition!

I wore a suit and tie to the dinner, and, blushing with joy, I stood before the applauding audience while my portrait was announced as the contest winner.

I often think back to that occasion and also to the days when my classmates and I worked with crayons to color purple-dittoed American flags while listening to our teachers as they read to us about Washington and Lincoln. Such activities instilled in me a respect for the dignity of the President of the United States and a patriotism that I feel today. Somehow, I can hardly help questioning whether the abandonment of Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday in favor of Presidents Day in 1971 may have caused important values to have become lost. I wonder if February comes and goes without stirring the hearts of children the way my heart was stirred when, so many years ago, the red, white, and blue month of Lincoln and Washington rolled around.