When I was growing up, Easter was very special. Eggs were carefully placed in vinegar water filled with fizzing Paas tablets. After making a few normal colors, my brothers and I would start mixing colors - and not always with attractive results. Buying your Easter dress and shoes...Easter was the first day of the year you could wear white shoes. Where I am from you still don't wear white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day. It just isn't done. The Easter basket was second only to waking up on Christmas morning. I can still taste the Hershey's chocolate! After church we would come home to a dinner (the southern noon meal) of ham and sweet potatoes and my mom's coconut cake - white cake with seven-minute icing covered in coconut. And you could only have this cake if the air conditioning was on because the humidity would cause the seven-minute icing to change from the consistency of fluffy white clouds to a puddle of egg whites. For the rest of the afternoon the older folks would nap while we hid eggs until the eggshells fell off. After dark we would tune in to Channel 16 (the local ABC station) and watch Pharoah get what he deserved when Charleton Heston parted the Red Sea in
The Ten Commandments.
Geting older hasn't changed the Easter rituals much. Although I no longer buy a new dress and shoes for Easter Sunday and it has been a long time since I had ham and sweet potatoes, I still dye eggs and fill my own Easter basket. I downloaded
The Ten Commandments from iTunes so I can watch Moses part the Red Sea whenever and as many times as I want. Age has its rewards.
This year I think I may even hide an egg...with a cupcake baked inside of course!
