Feest Isolation Days – 11 April 2020
A woman could get used to this weather! The tulips in the garden are all the colours of a rainbow with not a cloud in sight. All is quiet and still with birdsong the only sound. Lovely start to the day. This street is normally fairly quiet, but now there isn’t even the odd car going past. The green shoots of spring are visible on all the trees. The copper beech at the end of our garden delighted me yesterday when I noticed that the first few leaves had actually emerged. The catkins on the neighbour’s white birch are not stirring. The world is calm and serene.
With the awareness that not everyone’s sense of their home is like this, I appreciate ours even more, and am grateful all over again. Easter Saturday.
When I was a little girl, Easter Saturday meant getting out the new clothes that had been bought for us over the last weeks and placing them all together so it wouldn’t take too long to get dressed when it was time to get ready for Midnight Mass. There were usually new hats, coats, and gloves but always, no matter what else, there were new shoes.
The local shoe shop, Triangle, was the only place in town that we were ever taken to buy shoes. Joe, the man who ran the place, always looked after our brood. My brother and sister and I spent hours choosing…our Easter Chicks. Each person who bought a pair of shoes was invited to choose a live little peep that we took home with us in a shoebox. The little peeps were as colourful as my garden is now. Green, yellow, pink, blue. All of them had been dyed to match the Easter Eggs we made for the season. They were installed in a cage my father built especially for them and lived together in our kitchen. As they grew, their white feathers held a hint of the colour they had been dyed. When they got too big for their cage, my father took them off to the local farmer. We never asked questions.
Midnight mass was filled with families like ours, all in our new clothes sitting together in the pews bedecked with ribbons and flowers. The icons that had been shrouded in purple since the beginning of lent were now visible again and the air was filled with incense. A heady and wonderful way to start Spring.
When we got home it was straight to bed. Tomorrow was Easter Sunday, and chocolates!
Easter Chicks…but no new shoes!
My Easter Tree in our dining room
Have a great day!
With love,
Kathy
A propos the garden and your morning glory – a card from a friend,
“The morning glory which blooms for an hour
differs not at heart from
the giant pine
which lives for a thousand years”
Really lovely Bernie. Thanks!