Easter Memories

Just like in Michigan, the weather here on Easter isn't nearly as warm and springy as you think it ought to be. Today started off well enough -  cold, but sunny and still. But by 3:00, though, it was overcast, windy, snow flurries, the works.

I have a fairly random collection of Easter memories from growing up. I think the earliest is of a bunny cake my mom made for us when I was about three. White frosting, dried coconut, jelly beans, black licorice whiskers... Yum!

I also remember visiting my mom's friends the Davisos in Ohio around the same age and hopping around their living room (maybe with their daughter Tammy?) singing "Here Comes Peter Cottontail." This may or may not have actually occurred at Easter. But I think it might have been snowing outside, so it probably was.

At least one year my cousins Susan and Emily visited from Pennsylvania. We followed our usual Easter routine of looking around the house before church for our hidden baskets filled with fake Easter grass, dyed eggs, a chocolate bunny, candy (give me Brachs jelly bird eggs now ANY day of the year!) and a couple small gifts. That year it was little plastic flashlights. I can't remember if I got the red, yellow or blue one.

Every year after church (attended in a pretty new dress, stiff white buckle shoes that hadn't yet gotten scuffed and, one year, a new pink, broad-brimmed hat) we had an early afternoon dinner. Baked ham, scalloped potatoes and, more likely than not, the typical Palmquist holiday "salad" of pineapple rings on iceberg lettuce with a dollop of cream cheese, softened with a little pineapple juice and with chopped walnuts added, and a maraschino cherry on top.

Spring break from school always fell the week following Easter. When I was in sixth grade we took a family trip to Washington D.C., Annapolis and Baltimore. When I was in seventh grade we stayed home. Every other friend and family we knew went away for the week, and apparently we were so bored that year that my mother declared "Never again!" and went back to work so that we, too, could go away on an Easter vacation. (I guess finding the nest of baby bunnies in the pachysandra in front of the house wasn't enough to keep us entertained that week.)

The next year we began our annual tradition of renting a condo in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. We'd drive down on Good Friday, check in and hit the beach Saturday, (Mom and/or Dad must have gone to the grocery store,) dye eggs Saturday night (my favorite kind was the multi-colored dye you could float on the surface of the water to create a swirled effect), go to the local Lutheran church Sunday morning (complete with singing of the Halleluja chorus) and spend the rest of the week lying out and walking on the beach, eating burgers and etching our names into tables at Fudpucker's, shopping at the t-shirt stores and reading reading reading. We did this from the time I was in eighth grade through my senior year of high school, and I looked forward to it so much that about a month or so before Easter, I'd hang a paper chain in my school locker to count down the days.

Of course the Palmquists are a pasty people. The first year we went to Florida  we all got sunburned so badly that it felt good to sit on a cold toilet seat just to soothe the backs of our legs. The next four years we did indoor tanning beforehand -- just enough to get a base tan so that we could hit the beach in SPF 30 instead of SPF 45.

Last year I was pleasantly surprised to learn that "Paas," the brand of egg dye I grew up with, is the Dutch word for Easter. But I didn't see any dye at the store! This year I actually found some Paas dye, but it's not working nearly as well on brown eggs. (They don't have white ones at the local store here.)

The Dutch celebrate Easter over two days - Sunday and Monday. Most stores are closed Sundays anyway, so you can bet they're going to be closed Easter Sunday and "Second Easter Day" as well. EXCEPT FOR FURNITURE STORES. What?!? Yup, furniture stores are the only ones open in the Netherlands the day after Easter. What's the connection? Jesus's dad was a carpenter? I don't know, but apparently it's okay to do your furniture shopping on Easter Monday, but no other sort of commerce or activity other than going out for a walk in the crappy weather.

Comments

[Amanda]

I think the brown eggs turned out nicely! Very earthy.

[Merrill]

Oh! My mom made that very same bunny cake - tho' I think it was for a birthday. I bet they TOTALLY got the recipe out of the same newspaper or cookbook.

This year Faith is now two years past her original experiment with hard-boiled eggs - that is, the most comparable thing was the ping-pong balls gramma carries in her pockets and starts bouncing around when the kids need to burn off some energy. So before we managed to stop her, Faith threw harder and harder, wondering why the eggs wouldn't bounce.

But this year 1-year-old Josh was much more to the point. He just held an egg in his hand and started pounding it into the seat of a wooden chair. VERY satisfying noises resulted.