Well, the first blog post from today was a test. And it worked! I can’t believe I was able to figure things out. I was upset because I had lost connection with my subscribers! I am so darned proud of myself for figuring this out. And now here are some musings and my photos of tulips to celebrate spring:

Memories from past Easters (mostly written in the present tense so I can relive as I write).

Catholic School takes the week off. Leading up to Holy Week, the nuns are actually happy and smiling. They relax their stony faces and let us be entertained by some of the classmates, who have been dying to show off their singing talents. The nuns allow the students to ham it up. All dreariness disappears. We laugh and sing and life is good.

Back at home, to launch Holy Week, mom takes us shopping at Turn-Style, a discount clothing store. All five girls get new underwear and a new dress to wear for Easter Mass. Along with the new dress, I get white tights. And new shoes!  The shoes are white patent leather. And I am miserable! I am a tomboy and within minutes, I will scuff up the white shoes, and the smothering white tights will snag and have runs in them. And I will be scolded and told how hard my dad works so that I can look presentable at church.  And mom will be sure to remind me of all the sacrifices my parents make for me, the ungrateful child. “Sagrifici!” The word will ring out again and again until it swirls in my brain. And I will slink away feeling horrible about myself, mad at myself for hating the stupid pink dress mom has chosen for me to wear.

But I don’t have to wear the dress until Sunday. There is a whole week to be a tomboy and not ruin the financial splurge from the discount clothing store. I play with my friends. It is sunny but still chilly this time of year in Indiana, but I am undaunted by the weather. Mom reminds me to wear my coat and hat, but I run outside hat-less and feel free.  I ride my bike. I play tag with the boys. I try my hand at fishing, but the ground is still hard, so worms are hard to find, and the fish are still sluggish from the winter months. Doesn’t matter. I am outside after a brutally cold Midwestern winter. The sunshine befriends my winter skin.

Mom busies herself for Holy Week. On Monday, she does laundry. Piles of laundry. It’s time for spring cleaning. My older sisters help her with the cleaning. Jeanie loves to bake so she is baking cookies. Winter blankets get washed at home. Woolen sweaters and skirts get washed by hand. Everything is laid out to dry or pinned up on the clothing line. Toni is excellent at cleaning the clothing lines (they get dirty over the winter and could leave lines of dirt on the clean laundry). Toni is also quite good at hanging out the laundry. The day is crispy cool, but the sun dries the laundry. Mom has a saying, “Beddri Stenuti, Mezzu Stirati.” Literally: “Well Hung, Half Ironed.” Toni knows how to hang the laundry perfectly so that the clothing is less wrinkled when taken down. This makes mom’s ironing easier. When the clothing is taken back into the house, my mother irons everything. Everything!

There is so much cleaning going on. Mom is buzzing around the house. Our home feels like a sterilized hospital. Just for good measure, mom sprays a little raid in the corners so that the waking insects have no invite into our home! Then it’s grocery shopping and the cooking preparations begin! There’s the fun work of coloring and decorating hard boiled eggs and the making of the panereddri. This is a traditional sweet bread wrapped around colored hard boiled eggs. The bread is made to look like baskets with braided handles. Each one is a work of art. Each one fits into the palm of my hand. My mom makes little chicks, formed from the bread, and places the bread-chicks on the braided handles. They are adorable. She is so very creative! We all make the panereddri with her. We brush a white egg wash over the bread dough and, sometimes mom adds colorful nonpareils sprinkles before putting the panereddri in the oven. I can’t find photos of panereddri online, probably because this is a tradition only seen in Grotte!  And I do have photos of mom with trays of panereddri, but they are tucked away who knows where.

Ok, here is the oddest of all memories from the Holy Weeks of my childhood. After the clothing shopping, the spring-clean frenzy, the food shopping, the food preparations, there is Good Friday. The night before Good Friday, just before going to bed, my mom puts white sheets over all the mirrors and reflective surfaces of our house! Even the TV is covered. This is an old Sicilian custom and she follows it carefully. Mirrors are covered after a death occurs. The idea is that it is a great sin to be vain on the day Jesus was crucified. So by putting sheets up to cover mirrors, we are not tempted to look at ourselves. We are not supposed to brush our hair, or do anything that smacks of vanity. My sisters do not wear make up on this day. We wake up to this weirdness. And we wake up to my mom singing and humming funeral dirges. The songs are haunting and mournful and she sings them all day long. She does very little on this day and she fasts. She doesn’t require us to fast, but it’s no fun to eat when your mom doesn’t cook and she can’t eat. So we eat very little on this day. Dad is not a part of the lamenting and mirror coverings. He is at work, making money to pay off our Easter outfits. As a child, I am a little embarrassed by mom’s customs and her loud lamenting. Thankfully, inviting friends to the house on Good Friday is a off limits to us kids.

I just did a little research and apparently this tradition of covering mirrors after death is present in many cultures. It is part of the Jewish tradition to cover mirrors after death. And the ancient Romans did it. The Irish still do it in some places. And I read that when President Lincoln was assassinated, all the mirrors in the White House were draped and covered in black.

The next day, Holy Saturday, everything returned to normal. We could comb our hair again, wash our faces, and take showers!

Easter Sunday starts with finding a basket delivered under our beds by the Easter Bunny while we slept. The basket is filled with chocolate eggs and delicious sweets, including Baci chocolates amid a colorful bunch of basket filler grass. Mom and dad make early morning long distance phone calls to my Nonna in Sicily. We were all summoned to the phone to greet Nonna and wish her a Buona Pasqua.

And then there’s Easter mass.  Time to wear the new underwear and pink dress, the white leggings, the white patent leather shoes. A crowded mass.  And then back home. While mom and my sisters cook, I sneak outside to wreak havoc on my Easter outfit. I cannot help myself. I will feel guilty later, but for now, I am free to run around! And then it’s time for our meal: homemade bread cut in half, drizzled with olive oil, topped with sea salt and cracked black pepper, roasted lamb dotted with a garlic-herb aioli, a deep dish of mostacciolli, a gigantic salad, a potato salad, and, of course, the panereddri.   My aunties and cousins come over. Sometimes we go over to their homes. The boy cousins chase the girl cousins after the heavy meal and the adults play scupa, a card game that elicits arguments and wild laughter.  When the adults play “scupa” or scopa in Italian (the card game’s name literally means to “sweep away” as in to sweep away your winnings), they forget for the briefest of time that they are parents. For the briefest of moments, they become like us, carefree children, free of sacrifices, free of responsibilities.

Those were the happiest of times.

Happy Easter. Happy Spring. Happy traditions as you celebrate Easter, Passover, and Ramadan.

Below: a scopa card deck