Easter Acrostic and a Prose Piece of Easter Memories

 

For this second week of National Poetry Month, I am sharing with you an Easter wish with the following ten-line acrostic poem; then, you will find some Easter memories in prose form.

 

 

Easter Acrostic

 

by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

 

 

Easter wishes

Arranged in

Springtime baskets with

Tulips, tall and pink,

Eagerly await the showers for

Rejoicing, renewing.

 

Like the TV show JEOPARDY,

I ask you to answer in the form of a question.

Look for the clue within this Easter acrostic:

You will know the virtual Easter gift I give to you.

 

 

A Prose Piece of Easter Memories

 

The clean, clear, distinctive fragrance of vinegar easily comes to mind and nose.  Whenever I am using vinegar to clean a floor, the smell of the vinegar reminds my senses of dying Easter eggs.  As a child, I loved this magical, creative, artistic endeavor of the Easter season.  Although the grocery store of my uncle and maternal grandmother did not stock too many items of the holiday fare, on the shelf behind the adding machine were the boxes of Easter egg dye.  Inside the box, about five inches by five inches by five-eighths inch, were the tablets that made the magic when one of the tablets was placed in the bottom of a small bowl or cup and then covered with vinegar and water.  Although I dyed Easter eggs in the 1950s into the 1960s, PAAS dye kits for Easter eggs were first sold in New Jersey in 1880 for five cents.  Although I have always preferred pastel colors, the eggs dyed the outstanding orchid color were my favorite.  My sister and I did not have plastic eggs during our childhood, we dyed and hid actual boiled eggs–until one of our parents deemed the eggs too smelly to hide any longer.  I most recall hiding the eggs inside, so I imagine that many Easters of my youth were either rainy or cool for an Indiana spring.

 

My mother must have been a forerunner of the recycling movement because in the 1950s, she would place Easter baskets in the very high closet above the linen closet in our bathroom; then, when the next Easter rolled around, she took some of the used baskets from the closet and even recycled some of the pink or green cellophane grass, but did add fresh Easter candy and the newly dyed Easter eggs.  I will not admit how many years passed before I realized my mother’s recycling efforts.  I guess she taught the Easter Bunny a thing or two about recycling.

 

During my first year of teaching, one of my students gave me for the Easter of 1973 a beautifully feathered duck whose feathers bountifully form a nest in which was a large candy Easter egg.  The duck’s head is made of styrofoam with a pipe cleaner mouth and a flattened flower atop his cute head.  Amazingly, this Easter duck is the same orchid color that I so liked for coloring Easter eggs.  Each Easter, I still set this feathered duck on one of my tables as part of a little Easter decor and remember those first two semesters of students.  Today, that student (who worked after school at a grocery store because he was one of twelve children in his family) would be about fifty-six years old, and I imagine he would never guess that I still have the purple duck.

 

 

Best wishes for a sunny and happy Easter filled with memories and/or chocolate!

Alice and Leader Dog Willow

 

April 12, 2017, Wednesday  (This date marks the 138th anniversary of my paternal grandfather’s birth.)

 

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