In Your Easter Bonnet

Well, Sunday is Easter, making today Holy Thursday, when the Last Supper is commemorated.

If you went to parochial school back in the day, you got a couple of bonus days during Holy Week. Everyone - public schoolers, most businesses - got Good Friday off. But Catholic school kids got a halfday on Wednesday (Spy Wednesday, thanks to Judas) and a full day off on Thursday. Once you reached a certain age, you went to Mass on Holy Thursday - a small price to pay for the day off school - and sort of cool because it was a rare evening Mass. (My most vivid memory of Holy Thursday was going to Mass with my father and sister Kath. Somehow, Kath and I got the giggles, and I remember my father lifting me out of the pew to sit on his other side so Kath and I would be separated. I have no recall of what set us off - spotting some dopey kid we couldn't stand, a prissy-pious  parishioner scooting by, soeone in the choir hitting a clinker - but my father was pretty pissed, and reported our misdeed to our mother when we got home. Generally, he had a good sense of humor, but not when it came to church-y things.)

Friday my father had off of work, and our family's big deal was securing a group indulgence by making a flying visit to three churches. My mother liked to visit different churches, so each year she'd plan out where in the far-flung diocese of Worcester we'd head. She especially enjoyed the trek if the churches were new since the prior Good Friday - and during that era of Church Triumphant on Earth, American edition, there was always a new church to take in.

Saturday was spent prepping for Easter: dyeing Easter eggs (fun, even though I was disgusted by hard-boiled eggs; I suppose my mother ended up eating them for lunch during Easter week) and glaming up for the big day (spoolies in the hair, etc.).

Easter meant a new Sunday dress and a new Easter coat and hat. Unless you outgrew it, you'd wear that dress pretty much every Sunday for the next year. You'd wear the hat until late fall, when you swapped out your straw Easter hat for something warmer. 

My most memorable Easter bonnet was the one I got in second grade. My mother wanted to buy me a cute little sailor style hat with navy streamers, but I insisted on a completely hideous little white half hat covered with white flowers that had red and green stamens (seems a bit Christmas-y to me; why not pink and purple?). I grew up in a family and era when a child insisting on something just didn't fly, so why my mother let me go for this hideous little half hat continues to amaze me to this day. I do know what the real attraction was. The hat came with a matching pocketbook that somewhat resembled a bird cage. I always was a fashion maven!

I had a couple of Easter dresses that I really loved. 

One was a pastel pink-purple-blue plaid with patch pockets (yay!) trimmed with black velvet. The other - my all time favorite - was a crisp little white cap-sleeved A-line number printed with sprigs of navy blue flowers. I absolutely adored that dress - my third grade Easter dress (the pastel plaid was fourth grade) - and was devastated when I outgrew it.

Easter meant Mass, then Easter baskets (which typically included a small gift like a stuffed animal or bubble bath, jelly beans, Peeps, a small hollow chocolate rabbit, some tiny chocolate and or marshmallow coated eggs, and those ghastly dyed hard-boiled eggs). Then we set out on our annual trip to my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Ralph's in Newton, which was almost like going into Boston. (One time, when the Prudential Center opened in 1964, my uncle took my father and the older kids into Boston to gawk at it. Excitement!)

While we only went to Margaret and Ralph's once a year, we saw them all that time.

They came to dinner at our house in Worcester every Friday (with their kids when they were younger but still older than the kids in my family). And they came to our house on Thanksiviging and Christmas Eve, and my grandmother's (who lived on the next street) for Christmas. 

Easter dinner - in my aunt's cramped dining room - was always ham, mashed potatoes, cole slaw (made by my mother), tons of veggies, pineapple-raisin sauce, and pies. She was still hosting Easter well into her 70's, maybe her 80's, and I remember that the last one there was on an unnaturally warm April day - and my aunt, who was always chilled in her old age, had the heat blasting.

There's nothing holy about my Holy Week. And I don't have a new dress, let alone an Easter bonnet. But I will be hosting a small family gathering at my house.

There will be ham. And a frittata for my pescatrian niece. I will make my mother's cole slaw, even if I'm pretty much the only one who likes it. The potatoes will be my sister Trish's amazing scalloped potatoes. And rather than pie, we'll have my niece Caroline's amazing carrot cake. The wine - chosen by Molly my wine-expert niece (she even took a course in college) - will also be amazing. I'm looking forward to what she comes up with. 

Trish will probably bring me a Peep - a yellow chick: the original is still the greatest - and it won't be Easter until I have bitten the Peep's head off.

Happy Easter to all, and to all a good night.