The ghosts of Easters past

I HAVE a confession to make. Easter for me is not only a time of fasting (which I did not do this year, sorry Lord), of fish, frequent prayers and reflections. Nor is it only a time of waving palms and shouting ‘Hallelujah’ or quarreling at the market over the damn price of fish. No. Easter is also a time when those pesky ghosts of Easters past return to haunt and make fun of me. Easter in the time of my youth was filled with such pleasantries as home-made eggnog, cold hot-cross buns, plenty food and family limes. However, there was a dark side to my Easter youth, and I mean dark as we had to go to Church at hours created by God for sleep. The memory of Easter Sunday is sharp in my mind and it feels like it was only yesterday. At five o’clock sharp, I would be awakened from slumber — my warm blanket all but begging me to keep it company if only for a few hours more.

Eyes burning with sleep and shut with yampee, I would then have to bathe in water colder than the mauby in the fridge. The blasted water was so cold it was enough to awaken the dead. Now in those days, my mother, good woman as she is, and I took a taxi from Curepe where we lived to St John’s Road in St Augustine and then a bus from St John’s Road to Mt St Benedict — Church on the mountain. It is a beautiful place to be at Easter but not at that hour of sleep deprivation. I remember arriving for Easter Sunday Mass well before 6 am, the mists coming down from higher up the mountain covering the Church yard, similar to the opening sequence from that old television series Highway To Heaven, which starred long dead Michael Landon, who played the part of some kind of angel on earth. Unlike me. In those days the priests at the Abbey were from Europe and I must tell you that in my half-sleepy state it was damn difficult to understand their double Dutch.

They could barely speak intelligible English which of course sent yours truly fast asleep only to be awakened by the sharp and very painful edge of a Chinese fan delivered to my ears with pinpoint, deadly accuracy. Mama was not one to let the good priest’s words on Christ, redemption and the forgiveness of sins fall on sleeping ears! Needless to say, my ears and I, still have a major phobia over Chinese fans. Even up to this day, I’d rather be around knives, guns or a vicious dog than a Chinese fan. The thought of these fans is enough to make my poor ears tingle. And then there was the Easter egg fiasco of which the ghosts of Easters past regularly delight in teasing me. That particular Easter is clearly etched in my mind.  Let me start at the beginning. I remember it as if it were only yesterday and not when I was about eight years of age. In those days, the idea of Easter eggs (the chocolate kind) was something unheard of in my family. You would quicker get eggnog or scrambled egg or quiche than an Easter egg.

But after watching television and seeing the happy boy and his sister gleefully searching for Easter eggs hidden all over their house, I decided to ask various members of the family if we could do the same. Of course the answer was always no. But being an obstinate sort, never able to take no for an answer, I decided to take matters into my own hand. So one Easter Season — mere days before Easter Sunday — I decided to take a couple eggs from the fridge and hide them around the house, my plan being to organise a search on Easter Sunday or the Monday, whichever tickled my fancy. I hid one egg in a closet filled with my mother’s going-out clothes and her Sunday Bests. I hid one behind the stove. I hid another at the back of the couch. Man I tell you, I hid nearly a half dozen eggs all over the house. I thought to myself, “I’m going to have a whale of a time searching for these Easter eggs.”

Ehn heh? Easter Sunday and Monday came and went and to tell the truth I completely forgot about the hidden eggs, simply because it wasn’t our custom. The eggs stayed well and truly hidden, ticking stink bombs waiting, you could say, to spell my doom. Even as I write about this episode from my youth, I grow pink and weak to the stomach. But I digress. Back to the story. After the Easter holidays, when school reopened, I was coming home from school and saw my mother in the yard waiting on me with that look which I knew only too well spelled imminent cut-tail. As the butterflies awoke and started their frantic flight in my stomach, my mind raced as I formulated the lies I would use to save myself from whatever mortal sin I had committed.

And then the smell hit me. The entire house smelled of rotten eggs. My mother had apparently gone out of her head wondering why her house was suddenly smelling bad, just so one day. In between the licks, she explained how she went searching through all the nooks and crannies of the house thinking some poor mice had expired and needed to be found and given a decent burial. The strongest smell came from the closet where her best and oldest clothes were kept. It was at the closet that I got the most clouts and slaps. Apart from the cut-tail I also had to go and locate all the other eggs and dispose of them and then clean up the mess. Yes indeed, I have had some strange experiences in my life but the Easter egg stink fiasco ranks high among them. Its nice to sit back and enjoy these memories. I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Easter weekend and the youngsters had better luck with their Easter eggs (chocolate or otherwise) than I had.