1) Yesterday I was thinking so much about Mother, her creativity and ability, and particularly about the beautiful Easter eggs she made in the 1970s. I don’t remember when it was she made her Easter tree first, but I remember it well: thin twigs with many branches, stripped of leaves and painted white, anchored carefully into a highly decorated coffee can or something, and then hung with these gorgeous eggs that she’d made herself. I remember us poking tiny holes into eggs to get all the white and yolk out, and I remember especially one bright blue egg that Mother coated with glue and rolled in crushed white eggshell for a brilliant two-tone effect. Loops of ribbon or lace to hang them with, dyed eggs with glitter or other designs. I can’t recall what-all, but they were nothing I could have imagined myself.
Mother never through anything away. I photographed her stash of Easter eggshells, saved for any future craft projects, in 2016.
1a) There was also the very large orange papier-mâché Easter egg with the tiny chick inside that Mother bought at the church craft fair. Edged with yellow and clearly formed around a balloon that was then popped to add the chick inside, Mother would hang it on a white-painted lamp stand.
1b) Mother also had a collection of eggs: stone, wood, cloisonné, actual eggs that had been painted. The first one she got in Hawaii in 1977, delicately painted with a pagoda and orange flowers. Mother said that some of the paintbrushes were so fine they had only one hair on them. I remember another in a presentation box from an event she went to. And a beautiful pale purple egg painted with a violet that she bought at the church craft fair.
1c) I think all that stuff must have gone in the sale. The one egg I chose to keep was an orange stone egg balanced on a little gold ring of daisies.
2) My sister has definitely inherited the creative talents of our mother, and her mother and grandmother before her. We texted this morning with Easter wishes, and she shared that her sister-in-law is helping her with a quilt. It’s beautiful, and I could only think how pleased Mother would be with it.
2a) But they’ve all expressed their creativity a little differently. Gramma made her own clothes, appliquéd designs to decorate dish towels, and made bead flowers. Mother went through all sorts of crafts: burlap flowers, découpage, knitting, papier-mâché. There was nothing she couldn’t do. My sister took up needlepoint, some of it quite elaborate, and I cherish the pieces she created specially for me. I just “loaf, in a decorative and highly charming manner.”
3) Easter this year is much quieter than childhood Easters. Instead of church clothes, Sunday school, Easter services, egg hunts, and a family dinner either big or small, I texted my sister and the children individually (I have not actually seen the family in person since Mother’s funeral in 2019) and I will have Easter tea with the Boyfriend via Zoom. I am quite content with this arrangement. But Memory, that fickle trickster, can raise emotions, and I found myself — hmm, how to describe without alarm? — in a heightened state writing this morning’s column in haiku form about dressing for Easter Sunday as a little boy.
3a) Having to have everything just so, Rex Humbard and/or Oral Roberts on television (Mother and Daddy went through a brief phase with those TV preachers), the cool spring air, and always the three of us in the car waiting for Mother to swirl out of the house late to Sunday school. Always looking perfect, fresh, lively, every hair in place. I have no idea how she did it.
4) For that column I had to leaf through my baby book for a photo, another example of Mother’s creativity. She made baby books for both my sister and myself, from birth until about second grade. Mother did so much I honestly don’t know how she had time to do everything. I value that book so much.
The O’Neil Family art in their memorial booth at Doyle’s, as seen at the auction, November, 2019. The O’Neils had 12 children as seen in the painting at right: a son, ten daughters, and then another son.
5) Speaking of dressing your best for Easter Sunday, over on ye Ynstygrymme Etiquetteer had reposted someone’s story about Boston’s famous O’Neil Sisters, all ten (!) of them, dressed alike for the Easter parade every year by their mother Julia. She made all the clothes herself (!) and had to get started in February! Their day had passed by the day I got to Boston, but I learned about them at Doyle’s, where they were memorialized in one of the booths in the front room.