Remembering the Easter of my childhood. Good Friday was always spent at home. There was no rush for school. The television would be on the Good Friday Appeal. The house would be heavy with the scent of roasted almonds. My Dad would cook all day. He would bake sweet Maltese pastries, figolli, that we would only have at Easter. They were delicious, melt in your mouth pastries that I would anticipate from one Easter to the next. Mum would be busy all day, washing up after Dad, ironing our Easter clothes for Sunday’s mass. These memories fill me with a sense of calm.
Fast forward to now and Easter creeps up and takes me completely by surprise. Despite always having good intentions to be prepared, I never am. Easter is a frantic rush. Last minute dashes to fluorescent filled shopping centres buying overpriced chocolates, and then rushing home to collapse in exhaustion. At the end of it all, the only thing I find myself grateful for is the long weekend. While I spend hours and hours meticulously planning birthday parties and Christmas celebrations, Easter is always overlooked.
AJ came home earlier this year with his school newsletter and I was excited to read that he would be having an Easter bonnet parade on his last day of term. That very week I went out and bought him a little blue hat; while images of hot glue guns, little bunnies and ribbons danced in my head. Yet that little blue bonnet has sat, collecting dust in my study, for weeks now. Price tag still attached, sitting there alone, with no sign of Easter decorations or life.
Compelled to change my ho-hum Easter habits I went out and bought the last remaining Easter craft decorations sitting on the shelf and a hot glue gun. When I was a child, my mother would spend hours making my Easter bonnets, year after year. Bonnets with ribbons and bunnies, bonnets covered in chocolate eggs. Bonnets that had rabbit ears and bonnets that I would sometimes need to balance very carefully on my head.
It may only be small, but making AJ his Easter bonnet is a start. I profess no crafting elegance or grace, but I tried my very best. With every bunny I glued on and pipe cleaner I twirled a sense of pride came over me. Proud that my son would wear a bonnet made by his Mum.
On Good Friday, the television will be set to the Good Friday Appeal. On Sunday, as a family, we will go to mass. Raising my boys in a household that is Australian, Maltese and Greek almost begs me to pay more attention to this celebration.
The list of traditions is endless. The opportunity to create these traditions in my own house is too good to simply pass up on. Even if I only start with a hat.
The next Conversations over Coffee link will open on
Thursday April 25, 2013 (7am EST).
The theme is Conversations with History
How do you celebrate Easter? Have you made an Easter bonnet?
