"In your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it, you'll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade." Irving Berlin
The Easter dresses Mom sewed for her three daughters didn't include bonnets, but they made us feel grand. I searched for the photo today, the one with the three of us lined up on the concrete front porch, wearing our light-weight nylon dresses with tiny green flowers and a narrow ribbon sash. Judy is the tallest---she must have been about 10, and there I am with my gap-toothed first-grader's grin and cuddly two-year-old Debbie steals the show with her "love-me-I'm yours" grin. We didn't appreciate at the time how much effort it must have taken Mom to sew three dresses in time for Easter while managing four kids—no wait, it must have been five kids---Timmy was born that year in February. But it went without saying that we had to have new clothes for Easter, the time of renewal and religious rejoicing. Oh, and the time we could start wearing our white shoes.
This is the first Easter without my mom. She died February 24. She wanted to sing the Hallelujah Chorus in heaven, and she's got a new white Easter robe for the choir, one she didn't have to sew.
Thanks for sharing that, Ruth. I always think of the pre-Easter-church service piano concerts at home with the exultant Resurrection hymns. "Up from the grave He arose", and "He Lives, He Lives!". Wake up with those running through my head Easter morning still!
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