Easter Sunday on Chestnut Street

In the old movie, "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone," from an original story by Tennessee Williams, an aging actress known for her sophistication and elegant dress is told by Countess Magda Terribili-Gonzales of Rome, "No great ladies are produced by countries less than 200 years old." The "Milton Spring of Mrs. Marguerite Bounds" would contradict this belief, as my mother would deck herself out for Easter Sunday in a fashion probably not seen today.  A big-brimmed, flowered hat would be chosen for the third-row pew in St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in Milton where she would hold court, her head thrown back and bees buzzing around her.

 

If the spring Sunday of the Movable Feast religious holiday was cool enough, as it often was in late March or early April, she would call her mink stole into active duty or wrap a fur tippet made of stone martens, light-colored European sables, around her shoulders, each biting the other’s tail in a circle, their glass eyes glinting in the stained-glass sun rays. Robin's-egg blue eye shadow would adorn her eyelids, and Revlon's Cherries in the Snow lipstick would be applied to her lips.

 

A pastel-colored suit made with one of DuPont's miracle fibers called either Ban-Lon or Butte Knit would be carefully chosen from the closet, taken from its dry-cleaning bag, smoothed and laid on the chenille bedspread. Pearls the size of golf balls and clip-on earrings the size of quarters would complete the jewelry ensemble, for as Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II once told her daughter Gloria, "All great ladies have pearls."

 

Pointy-toed spectator high heels would complete the outfit to be admired by all the parishioners. This ensemble was grand enough for an even grander promenade on the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk of those days. My father wore his blue-and-white-striped seersucker suit to show that he was a proper Southern gentleman. I was forced unwillingly into a sailor dress, to be annoyed by its necktie and collar flapping in the ocean breeze.

 

There was usually an Easter basket cocooned in pastel cellophane, and yellow peeps and chocolate rabbits that I always felt bad biting into. The bunnies were always hollow and made of cheap, waxy chocolate. There was never a family outdoor Easter egg hunt, since high heels had the habit of sinking into the grass, and also into the cracks of the Boardwalk, which is probably why our own familial promenade was abbreviated.

 

My mother's favorite Easter candy was those big chocolate-covered coconut eggs decorated with marzipan flowers. She had never tasted and would never taste peanut butter of any kind. Thin slices shaved off these eggs were presented on saucers to be savored in increments. The eggs were wrapped in tinfoil and placed in the refrigerator until offered again, only when she said so.

 

The scent of the lilac bushes, daffodils and hyacinths outside would mix with the scent of the baking Easter ham, served up later that day with fresh local asparagus and her inimitable potato salad. And there had to be the seemingly medieval hot cross buns, the origin of which always fascinated me.

 

Best yet was the spring vacation, the week off from school, and the anticipation of the May Fair that came to Milton School a few weeks later. But for now, there was only the remainder of the Easter basket to work through, and the hollow chocolate bunny with the bitten-off tail or ears to confront, his flowered box house with the cellophane see-through window empty of its occupant and sitting on the mantel. However, it didn't sit there for long in my household at that time, because empty Easter baskets with their messy cellophane grass were whisked away before Easter Monday! The hats went back in their hat boxes, the stone martens to the closet, and the Easter ham, now covered in tinfoil like the half-sliced-off coconut eggs, also housed in foil, were the only remnants of the Movable Feast left to leisurely enjoy.

 

The palms often given out on Palm Sunday were the only grim reminders of the solemnity of the season, left to stay for awhile draped on a mirror in my grandmother's bedroom.