Grandma's Story - Chapter 4 - Easter

I decided to add another chapter to Grandma's Story, a story for my grandkids about life in the olden days. And since it is Easter, this chapter is all about how our family celebrated Easter. By the way, Happy Easter!

CHAPTER 4
Easter

You come from a very devout Catholic family – both on my side and on ‘Buelo’s. Buelo was even going to be a priest and was in the seminary for several years before we met. And I once gave a thought to becoming a nun. Many of my school friends did enter the convent.

Nanny, my grandmother, and her sister Kiki, my great aunt, had an uncle who was a priest. August A. was the youngest brother of their mom and he studied at the American Seminary in Rome. He was pastor of a church in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and later he became a monsignor, a rank in the Catholic clergy just below bishop. My Dad always had him bless any new car that the family got; the blessing was better than a St. Christopher medal. Nanny and Kiki took Aunt Kathy and me to visit Msgr. A. every year. I loved going way up to the "country" on the train. But Msgr. A. was gruff and a bit scary. I remember the dark furniture in the rectory with its carvings of angels and gargoyles that added to the feeling of mystery that he had about him.

Nanny and Kiki also had a cousin who was a nun. They visited her in California in 1947, traveled all the way across country by railroad. How I wanted to go with them! Kiki would take me to the Miraculous Medal novena every Monday at St. Brigid’s, our parish church. Aunt Kate, the sister of my grandfather Pop-Pop, wanted to be a nun but her mother refused to give her permission to enter the convent. Many years later her own daughter Florence asked to become a nun and Aunt Kate told her to wait, to work for a year and then see. A year later Florence still wanted to be a nun and when her mother said "no", her father, my Uncle Val reminded Aunt Kate of what had happened to her. So Florence became Sister Mary Alma, a Sister of Mercy.

My parents sent us to Catholic schools and we had religion class every day. Even Dick and Jane in our readers were Catholic. And I remember my Dad sitting on the edge of his bed, his head bowed in prayer, before he went to sleep each night. My favorite photo of Dad is one taken when he was in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC’s) during the Great Depression. Dad and the other young men are gathered around an altar, located in the great outdoors in front of Jackson Hole Lake, the majestic Teton Mountains towering in the distance. That was his kind of cathedral. My Hungarian grandmother had statues of Jesus and Mary with lighted candles in her home. They fascinated me along with the embroidered religious wall hangings, with Hungarian writing.

With this history, is it any surprise that Easter is one of my favorite holidays. In those days, Lent, the 40 days before the feast of Easter, were days of fasting and sacrifice. For us kids, that meant giving up candy or cookies for Lent and saying extra prayers or rosaries. My friend Ellen and I went to daily Mass at St. Brigid’s during Lent. I loved the liturgy of Holy Week. There was a procession on Holy Thursday, with girls dressed in white throwing flower petals before the Blessed Sacrament, which was carried by the priest in a golden holder called a monstrance under a canopy. Then it was placed for adoration on a side altar decorated with flowers and drapes. The next day, Good Friday, the day Jesus died on the cross, my friends and I visited the decorated altars in the churches in our area – I think we were supposed to go to seven. Afterwards we attended Good Friday services and listened to talks on the seven last words of Jesus. We spent the whole day in church. And we did not listen to the radio or watch television on Good Friday in remembrance of the cross. One Lent, Kathy and I were watching a movie on television "Arsenic and Old Lace". At midnight it was Good Friday and my Mom turned off the TV in the middle of the movie – to our dismay! I can still see the look on her face, sort of a sheepish grin.

On Holy Saturday I loved to go to the Easter vigil liturgy. It was so beautiful but back then it was held in the morning and hardly anyone was in the congregation. I would sneak into the vestibule of the church to try to watch the priests doing the blessing of the Baptismal font and the holy water – they chased me away. Now the people are part of these liturgies that I treasure. My eyes would tear up when the bells rang out at the Gloria -–for the last 2 weeks of Lent there was no organ, no music and all the statues were covered with cloths. This was to show how sad it would be without Jesus. But during the Easter vigil Mass, all the coverings came off the statues, the organ played out, the bells rang, and the gold drapes of Easter were raised. It was a wonderful experience for me.

On Easter Sunday, my Dad gave my Mom, sister and me corsages to go with our new spring outfits. Mom got an orchid, Kathy got carnations, and I got a gardenia corsage; I love the smell of gardenias to this day. On Easter Saturday my family colored Easter eggs, which were hidden by the Easter Bunny. I believed in the Easter Bunny more than Santa when I was a kid. On Easter morning we hunted for the eggs and our Easter Baskets, filled with Chocolate bunnies, jelly beans and fancy non-edible eggs with a little peek-a-boo window – when you looked inside you could see a mini-Easter scene. After Mass on Easter morning, we would go across the street to my Hungarian Grandma’s house for her scrumptious pastries; my favorites were the apricot pastries. We got to see all our cousins there too.

Easter is a very special day in our family. April 11, 2009