Theresa Parker Pierce: In your Easter bonnet
Submitted by Theresa Parker Pierce
At Teacher’s Memorial Elementary School in Kinston, NC, Mrs. Skinner taught us all the seasonal songs. I must have loved music class because I memorized every word she taught us. “In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it…On the avenue, fifth avenue, the photographers will snap us, and you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure.” That last word was one we all made up our own pronunciation for. (I now know that it means, a colorful magazine.) The song was belted out by all the neighborhood children every time we got dressed up. And on Easter Sunday, we went all out.
At church, all the women wore bonnets. I remember leaning left and right to be able to see the choir through a sea of hats. There was singing, music and preaching. When the message went long, not allowed to stretch out on the soft pew, I curled up in the crook of my momma’s arm.
Easter, a chance to celebrate spring by wearing pink, baby blue and yellow. We matched the colored baby chicks we saw at the local farm store. While dying eggs is still popular, dying baby birds went out of vogue, along with the practice of gifting live bunnies and ducks. We received them as presents but eventually the animals made their way to local farms and ponds.
Along with dressing up in our Sunday best, we modeled our new shoes. There’s an expression, “All new shoes wear well.” The Sunday footwear of my childhood defied that saying. Patent leather Mary Janes were white and glossy but pinched across the top. Maybe it was that strap or the person who tightened them. Prior to purchase, we had to walk on the carpet because once we walked out the door of the store, they could not be exchanged after we drug our toes on the curb.
The women all wore corsages, the fanciest of all being the orchid. Carnations were the top contender and highly prized if they complemented the colors of the dress. The men were not left out. They wore boutonnieres to match their seersucker suits. All the men wore tied ties and bow ties. The only ones who got away with clip-ons were the boys because it was hard enough to dress a squiggly boy much less make him stand still for the tie ritual. More than once when my brother had learned to tie his own tie, he’d redo it in hopes of making it not choke (his words).
We posed for pictures holding our long-handled Easter baskets. The baskets held a chocolate bunny, marshmallow eggs with candy coating, jelly beans and real eggs pastel dyed in a bed of green plastic grass. Film cost hard earned money. We crowded in as many people as possible to make good use of the film. We were surrounded by aunts with hats. And the pictures were purposely posed on porches or in front of Yellow Bell blossoms, pronounced, “Yella Belle.” You might recognize the flower name, Forsythia. We had to wait until the film was all used up, sent off in the mail and returned before we found out if the pictures turned out.
My momma carefully ironed the pleats in our dresses, thankful later when double knit was invented. However, those skirts lacked the perfect A-line look that stood out with the help of crinolines. They were itchy, code for, “Can I take this off and go play?” As soon as the picture session was done, we changed to play clothes. We whispered to one another, “Glad we are done getting our pictures tookin’, let’s eat.”
Lunch was prepared before church and kept warm in the oven. Momma went all out and served chicken salad, green beans, ham, and pineapple slices on lettuce leaves with a dollap of mayonnaise, a cherry on top. The women tried to out-do one another with other fancy foods that children rushed through so they could bite the head off their chocolate bunnies. No one worried about sugar, our tea sweetened with saccharine, a leftover of sugar shortages from World War II.
Some Easters were spent at the homes of other relatives where the egg hunts ended up the same. The parents had a one-hide rule. After that the children hid and rehid the eggs so many times we lost about half of them when it was time to go home. At least they were the boiled kind which momma would turn into egg salad that the kids did not eat anyway. “She mommicked it up,” (our word for messed up). None of us ate eggs mixed with stuff.
At each holiday, my aunts put on a show with their desserts. I watched them crack open coconuts, drain coconut milk to be used later, grind coconut chunks with a meat grinder attached to the table and make everything from scratch. The six-layered cake was topped with a delicate row of colorful jelly beans. Pecan and coconut pies were staples. And my personal favorite was thinly sliced banana cake drizzled with warm powdered sugar icing. The cakes stood like soldiers on cut glass pedestals along a side board.
This year as I prepare to celebrate Easter with my grandchildren, I will bake with cake mix, fill plastic eggs and take pictures, lots of them, all I want, thanks to the digital age. I will teach the children the songs of my youth, “Here Comes Peter Cottontail,” “The Bunny Hop” and “Easter Parade” to honor Mrs. Skinner and music teachers everywhere. The magic is the same. Happy Easter!
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