As I've begun to feel able to use my left arm/hand again, I've started to do a little of the "spring cleaning" around my house that obviously should now be called "deep into autumn cleaning." Hey, I meant to do it in April, but life kept getting in the way. I wish I could have done it then, but you know how time gets away from us. And yeah, yeah, yeah I know, "if wishes and buts were candy and nuts, then we'd ALL have a Merry Christmas!"
Last night, I felt this urge to rearrange the stuff in my china cupboard and while I was in there, wipe away an inch or two of dust from the last cleaning that was, hmmm, shall we say back in February? While I was moving things out, I came across it.....probably the MOST unusual thing that I have in my possession as of now. I'm going to guess that NOT A ONE of you have one for yourself...that's how special it is. Take a look at the photo below:
And here's how THIS story goes....
Once upon a time, long long ago, there were two little girls named Cindy and Peggy (ahem, that's my sister and I). Every weekend they went to their grandmother's house to spend time there while both of their parents worked. The grandmother loved those two little girls so much and she did everything she could to make their lives very happy.
One Easter Sunday morning in 1963, she helped the little girls dye Easter eggs. Later in the afternoon, they had a special Easter egg hunt at Grandmother's house. It was raining that Easter Day so the grandmother decided they should hide all of the eggs in the house. At the appointed time, those two little girls made a mad dash about the rooms gathering all of those eggs up as fast as they could. When they thought all were found, they helped their grandmother peel them and make deviled eggs. Then, when the fun was over, they went home. The End~
Well, if that's how the story REALLY ended, then the 46-year old Easter egg in the basket shown above, would not even be a reality, but it is. Catherine Brown was our maternal grandmother and she took it upon herself to take care of my little sister and I every weekend for the better part of two years while our parents both took on jobs in the little town of Halstead, Kansas.
Grandmother Brown, in the days following that Easter morning, was cleaning her bungalow-style home. She spied something that looked oddly out of place, behind the big chiffarobe that was always in the spare bedroom. When she got down on the floor to pick it up, she realized we'd missed one of the eggs from our hunt three days earlier. For some strange reason she decided to keep it and show it to my little sister and I when we came that next weekend. She placed it into the the little willow basket, atop of a folded up kleenix to cushion it. And folks, that's where it has sat for the past 46 Easter Sundays.
I have always wondered not only why that egg was kept all those years but how on earth it even survived in a very recognizable "oval condition". But survive and thrive it did! The egg managed to stay intact through Grandmother's three "moves" that followed. For the next 27 years, the Easter egg that my little sister and I missed that Sunday afternoon stayed in our grandmother's possession. Wherever she moved, a special spot was found for it to be displayed. By the time that Cindy and I both had children of our own, we delighted in showing our own kids the "egg" and telling them to story of how it came to be.
Grandmother was able to live on her own and take care of herself until she reached the age of 99. Until her 101st birthday, she made her home with my aunt in Halstead. Still, she was not deterred-the "egg" would stay with her, tucked safely away in one of her closets. It was only when she entered a nursing home at age 101, did she relinquish custody of the egg to my sister and I.
For the past 19 years, the "egg" has been in our possession. I've got to tell you friends, I've moved a whole lot more times than Grandmother ever did with that egg! I can't believe that through the dozens of moves, with me being its owner, that it has survived. But it has-and now, well I can't seem to part with it either. I ask myself from time to time, what is it about that nearly half-century old Easter egg that makes me keep it? I already know the answer.....
That old egg is a reminder to me of a lovely time in life--a time when two little girls were part-time weekend residents of a magical kingdom called "Grandmother Brown's house". It was a time of playing Monopoly with a grandmother who always insisted that we should give her our "get out of jail free" card in order that she might be available to make our lunch! (lol, lol) And we believed her. This was a grandmother who baked those little tiny pressed sugar cookies and always kept about 10 dozen made up ahead in the freezer. It was at her house that I remember eating cheese slices for the first time and splitting a bottle of her favorite kind of pop, orange soda, with my sister. What precious memories.....
I've never even picked up that egg because I know that my grandmother's hands folded the kleenix that lies underneath it. I don't throw it away because I know that she thought it special enough to hang on to for as long as she could. That ancient egg is one of the few pieces of "physical" remembrance of my childhood that I have left to hold close to my heart. Perhaps when I'm dead and gone and my kids have to clean up my house and dispose of my things, they will be the ones to throw it away. But my kids know the story, and I'm guessing one of them will keep the tradition going and give that Easter egg a home for many years to come.
Friends, I have a question for you.... What do you hang on to from the past? Concert ticket stubs, old record albums, the t-shirt from the '70s that should probably have been turned into something for the "rag bag" years ago? Perhaps it's newspaper clippings, photos of people from long ago that you no longer remember the name of? Oh, and some of my personal favorites.....your old grade cards, the autograph book of all the kids from the 8th grade, or even a Valentine from a special person from a time so far away that you can't really remember what their last name was?
How many of you have had to clean out your parent's home when perhaps they entered a long-term care facility or sadly, when they have passed on? It's not easy, going through the things that have belonged to another. When I helped to clean out my mom's belongings when she moved from the house I currently call "home" into a nursing home, I never ceased to be amazed at what all she had kept.
As a child of the Great Depression, Mom would tend to hang on to a lot of stuff that most of us would have called "useless junk." But Mom knew better--and I've visited with a lot of other "kids" my age who told me similar stories of what their parents hung on to as well. People of that generation knew what the term living in a "thrifty manner" meant. And they lived that way every day of their life.
I'm not sure what my 3 kids will find when the time comes for them to clean out my house for me. For sure, I've tried to explain to them the "method to my madness" in tucking away the things that I have. For instance, I clip and save obituaries of the folks I've known, either through work, growing up years in Haven, or friends. It's important to me to do so and I have to say that I learned it from watching my own mom do the very same thing. I didn't want my kids to open up that big wooden box under the mantle and find the 100 or so obituaries already in there. The thought of them saying, "Holy Moley-what in the world was Mom thinking saving all these death notices?" is unsettling to me. I want them to say, "Oh, here's those obitiuaries of people Mom knew. Remember that night she told us that it was always important to remember the ones who have gone on ahead of us?"
No matter what they find, no matter what they shake their heads in disbelief over, they will already know the story of the little Easter egg in the basket. It will come as no surprise to them. The story of that nearly 5-decades old boiled egg is as much a part of their heritage as knowing the land of their ancestor's birth. It's all in how they look at it.
She lived to the winter of her 106th year and as each successive year passed by, Grandmother was often worried that perhaps God had forgotten her and she'd NEVER get "home" again. In God's "perfect time" she left us on a cold and bitter January morning, 1997.
Before we left for the cemetery, my sister and I slipped a "get out of jail free" card into her casket--a reminder that at long last, she had shed her "earthly body" and entered into her Eternal home. She finally got to walk "the streets of Gold" that she so often told me about when I was a little girl. And I know that some day I shall walk them with her. Rest in Heavenly Peace Grandmother.....the little egg is well cared for.
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