Easter Eggs

Does anyone know how this whole thing even got started?  The coloring of eggs?

Decorating eggs, yes, I know there is some long-ago old-world-y thing that must have happened.  Faberge an all that.

But when did it go mass-market?  When did we put this craft into the hands of children?

***

We were always a Paas family when I was a child.  One wire dipper per box, one box bought each Easter.  We never managed to keep track of the dippers from year to year.

One time we figured out that white crayons work as well as the "magic" clear crayon in each box, and that let to much artistic innovation.

When did Paas first figure out the little tablets that dissolve in vinegar?  That must have been the year egg-coloring went Big.

***

You're probably wondering, "What kind of coloring other than the tablets?  Weren't we all Paas families?"

The answer is "no," The McKellars were not.  They did that other kind of thing. . .some sort of sandy dye is in the bag, you put the egg in and shake it around.  The egg comes out marbled.

They were a latest-and-greatest type family.  Every block had one, right?  When Atari was topped by Coleco, guess who had Coleco. 

I remember thinking, 'This egg-shaking stuff must be cool."

And it did make a beautiful effect.

Not too much skill required, though.  I notice that the shake-stuff is no longer around.

***

Mom always required that we dye an egg solid in each color.

This was unreasonable.  "I think they're the prettiest," she'd say.  She was right.  Is right.  A solid-colored egg is lovely.

But we're working with a limited supply of eggs here, Mom.  You can't make us waste 8 of them on solid-colors.

She could, though.  And she did. 

***

We did all the tricks we thought were our own ideas but then grew up to realize that everyone was working with the same bag of tools.

There was the dip-part-way, flip-over-to-dip-in-a-different-color.

There was the dip-it-in-gradually-so-the-color-would-dye-in-different-shades.

The this-isn't-working-out-like-I-thought-it-would-so-submerge-it-in-a-darker-color-to-cover-it-up-and-go-from-there.

The write-in-"magic"-crayon-and-dip-only-to-learn-that-your-writing-or-artist's-touch-is-not-great-when-you're-using-clear-crayon-on-a-white-egg-and-see-what-you're-doing.

My brother had a unique one once.  Genuinely unique:  He bit into it with his incisor and used a fine point felt tip point to write a monologue from the auctioneer who auctioned off this tooth-print.

But my brother didn't actually dye the egg, so I don't know that this counts.

***

Gramma Gemma came to Easter supper with a special collection one year:  Eggs that she had dyed in liquids like tea, and coffee and cranberry juice, and then etched with a knife.

Beautiful patterns of vines trailing around from top to bottom, another with diamonds striping the surface like a delicate, European harlequin. 

She had not blown them out.  Neither had she hard-boiled them.  I'm deducing this now, over 20 years later, because what I know is that we made little paper rings to hold them up and we set them on a shelf in our basement.

What?  We weren't going to eat them, for goodness sake!

Joshua's hard boiled egg from Cubbies last year found its way under our front passenger's seat and that began to stink about a month later.  So, hard boiled eggs go rotten and smell bad.

But Gramma's eggs couldn't have been hard boiled because they never started to stink.

They were not blown out because after about a year, we dared to pick one up and shake it.  A definite rattle from within.  Felt like a hard, small ball inside a sturdy shell. 

At first, we didn't want the eggs to fall off the shelf because we didn't want to destroy Gramma's artistry.  But eventually, the greater reason was that we feared the smell if one were ever broken.

Whatever happened to those eggs?. . .


***

We boiled 48 for coloring and after the kids did 18 each, they still would have been happy to color more.

(We eat a lot of hard-boiled egg whites, so there was method in that mad number.)


Bryan and I did some, too.  I, ever trying to make one really beautiful, but my plans never fleshing out, and Bryan, up to his standard M.O. in using his magic crayon (we have several from years past) to write things like "BPP (heart) ALP."

I did not require any solids. 

The biggest thrill, again, was combining the dyes after the eggs were done--a grand free-styling color-wheel. 

***

Josh asked, in the midst of his coloring, "What do we do with Easter eggs?"

We eat them.

He was appalled. 

When you're 5, and can't remember back to the time you dyed eggs at age 4, or 3, or 2, the whole idea of coloring eggs (eggs!) is too wonderful to ever dream of terminating in the act of eating them. 

But we saved the dipper, and now have 7 going into next Easter.

A Lamb

You know that Jesus is the Lamb of God.  That the people of Israel had been sacrificing a lamb every year for the Passover Feast--a lamb whose blood was then offered for atonement.

And then, one year, Jesus became that lamb once and for all. 

But did you know that each family's lamb was precious to them?

They did not buy the lamb from the dealer and then walk it over to the High Priest for the sacrifice just minutes later.

Each family was to bring their lamb into their home about a week ahead of time.

They were to name it, and live with it, and care for it.  And then bring it for sacrifice.


What grief.
How did they go through with it every year?  Oh, what grief. . .

And yet--this grief--just a shadow in our shadowlands of what the Father felt as He turned His back. 

Seen from the Car

A few winters ago, on a day that was ice, ice, ice cold, the kind of day when it takes your vehicle a solid six minutes to warm up inside once you've started driving, Bryan and I were headed south on Powers and noticed this:

A guy on a motor scooter, bundled and wearing a ski mask.  At 50 mph heading north on Powers, he was drinking from a travel mug.

He was happy under that mask, I could just tell.  Tootling along on a busy street on a too-cold day, and probably hot coffee has never tasted better.

I love picturing that guy. 

***

My mother, Sister #1 and I were strolling along the Chicago River on a 70' afternoon in April.  A speed boat motored slowly along with its radio blaring a happy tune.  Something with a baseline.  A lot of horns, which always sounds like a party, right?

There was one guy on deck that I could see.  20-something.  His shirt off.  Shades on.  His skin pasty white from the shelter through winter.  And he was dancing.

Day off of work?  And it actually happened that his day off coincided with perfect weather for boating?  He was probably the happiest guy in Chicago that day.

I love picturing him, too.

***

I was stopped at a light heading downtown in the Springs the other day, in the midst of our unusual streak of early summer.  We hit  82' yesterday.  And we're going on, like, day 10 of this.

Here's a lady taking advantage of it:  she was in a motorized wheel chair, oxygen tank hooked on the back, her purse on her lap.  She wore purple pants, a pink shirt and a yellow beret. 

Her left leg was crossed over her right, grandly, as though she were drinking a mint julep on her porch at home.  And she was smoking. 

She made it--at 3 mph--from one corner of Platte to the other, hung a left and rolled a couple of yards to the entrance of the Walgreens where she stopped to finish her cigarette.

***

I'll tell you what I see from our car:  sign holders. 

Are they all over the country now?

They are all over this city.

This time of year, there are lots of men dressed like Lady Liberty or Uncle Sam--tax offices nearby.  But mostly, these people are not in costume.

Some of them just rock the sign, to the beat of their music, I presume, as 100% of the sign holders I've seen are hooked into iPods.

Some of them are fancy with their moves, though.  So fancy that I usually cannot read the sign. 

Is there a sign-holder agency that works like a temp office?   Or does Al's "We Buy Back Gold" Pawn Shop place a "sign holder wanted" ad?

How much do they make?

Do they drum up any business to justify the wage?  They must.  Because there are more sign holders out now than ever before.

Do they get a piece of whatever business they bring in?  How could they?  There's no way to measure their effectiveness. . . 

Hmm.  Wonder if I'd have done that job as a teenager.

***

Do you know what I look for, as I drive or ride, but rarely see?  Truck nuts. 

They make me laugh.   In the same way that I'm embarrassed when I laugh over something related to flatulence, I am embarrassed for laughing over truck nuts. 

There was a car somewhere in our neighborhood--must have been, because we saw it quite a few times--that was a total beater.  The driver was a young guy who didn't look cool.  He looked. . .quirky in that nerdy-but-individual way.

To this crummy car's rear bumper, the guy had attached a homemade pair.

And that item turned the entire vehicle into some kind of statement.  I don't even know what kind.    But it must have been funny because Bryan and I lost control every time we saw it.

I miss that car.  Haven't seen it in over two years.

***

I love seeing a guy in his truck with his dog next to him.  Makes me happy for the dog. 

***

When I see cops lying in wait for speeding traffic, I blink my lights to warn drivers headed into their trap. 

I didn't used to do this.  I used to frown upon the practice, and Bryan practiced it regularly. 

Now, I feel differently. 

I warned the guy, though, about the kind of relationship he was cultivating with citizens. . .

***

In the Fall of '93, Dad drove me to Omaha, Nebraska for my first semester of college.  His last child to go.  A new season for us both.

Northern Iowa was just recovering from a disastrous flood.  Our routed took us straight out I-80 and most of the time, across Iowa, the road was banked by lake after lake of flooded fields. 

The going was slow, as traffic was often reduced to one lane. 

At that pace, we both saw a huge yellow butterfly skitter past the windshield.  Surely we'd have killed it if we'd been going 70. 

Sure it was worth the extra hours of slow traffic to have seen it together--this lovely pair of wings, headed somewhere.

Amy's Kindergarten Narration

When it comes to "writing" in our homeschool work, Gemma and Joshua give "narrations."

That is, we separate the physical act of putting words onto a page from the mental and verbal work of composing thoughts and sharing them with an audience.

That is, I say, "What happened?" and they tell me what happened.

Or I say, "What did you learn?" and they tell me what they learned. 

There's a lot more to be said about this method, but this post isn't about pedagogy.

It is about an excerpt my Mother just sent me from a journal she kept as her kids were growing up.  The excerpt, it turns out, is my narration from the first day of Kindergarten:

SEPTEMBER 3

Amy’s first day of school – only one hour in the morning – 10:30 to 11:30 – she talked for three hours after! 

“Well, we didn’t do any work – just listened to Mrs. Fordyce – she doesn’t like being called Teacher” –she wants us to call her Mrs. Fordyce.

We went out to recess on the playground – a girl got stung by a bee –Andrea asked which was worse, to be stung by a bee or be cut by a mirror –there’s a girl in class cut by a mirror – we decided being cut by a mirror was worse.”

        

Later – “You know, I don’t know where I’m going to sit yet – Mrs. Fordyce didn’t assign us a desk – we have our locker – we can use one box for our gym shoes and paint smock and one for our rest towel – we can put only three things in our box (?) 

But I wish I knew where I was going to sit, I want to know who’s going to sit with me – do you think I should remind Mrs. Fordyce to assign our desks?

        

Later – Mrs. Meyers had the nicest hair, it was soft and wavy. Mrs. Kesbe had nice hair but she had to go work at another preschool. Mrs. Penland had the really curly hair. I remember Mrs. Fordyce last year had white hair, but now it’s grey

(Janice interposes,“Amy, you get gray hair before you get white hair.”) 

Well, anyway, Mrs. Fordyce was the nicest.

When kids play on the climbing tower, they can’t raise their hands (to touch ceiling) or Mrs. Fordyce will get upset – she says that gets her upset – she forgets, too, she says sometimes we have to remind her when it’s time for something because she forgets.

All of this relating for one hour of school – tomorrow she goes all afternoon, 12:30 – 3:20– it will take her until bedtime to tell me everything, I’m sure.

Squares

A lot of buzz about a movie called The Hunger Games.

For a few days,  I thought the movie was a satire of Hollywood body image.

***

My dog finally irritated me.  6 1/2 months of thrilled bliss. . .and then came some kind of bug in his system and middle-of-the-night relief on our rug.

So we penned him up at night, lest he choose a worse place.  He woke me up several times with a bark and I got out of bed to let him out. 

The bright side: no mess to clean in the morning. 

The dark side: it was worse than feeding a newborn all night in that he woke more times than my babies ever had. 

This dark side led to the unpleasant discoveries that

1) without a good night's sleep, I am in poor shape the next day and
2) one night of poor sleep takes be a good 4-5 days to recover from.

I'm kind of thinking that next time, I'd rather just clean up the mess, wherever I may find it.

***

4-square has made a big comeback.  The game, not the house plan. 

I see the squares taped and painted out all over now--in our cul-de-sac, at the park, in our church lobby for youth night, in parking lots.

4-square dominated our recess time in 3rd through 5th grade.  We divided--of our own accord--into a boys' game and girls' game.  We had names for all our serves--The Skyscraper, The Whippit, The Pinball, The Grasshopper. . .

We called it 'being Captain' when you got to the highest square.  Now, the kids call it 'being King.'

***

The supplies for Cubbies craft, snack and story time used to occupy about 2 cubic yards in our family room, stacked unattractively behind our sofa in a space where we normally don't put anything.

There's an American phenomena, a pretty recent one, too, Shakers notwithstanding: space in a home that holds nothing.

7 months of this arrangement and I finally could no longer live with it. 

Bryan had just finished a clever project of building shelves into a space of our basement staircase to hold DVD's etc.

This triggered a reorganizational shift of this stuff here, that stuff there, this other stuff moving downstairs. . . 

And somehow, we ended up with an empty closet in our office.

I hired Gemma, Joshua and the two friends they were playing with outside to carry all the Cubbie stuff upstairs to this closet.

This has left the space behind our couch in our family room empty again.

All that work--beginning with Bryan's project--to achieve empty space in our home.

It's so strangely beautiful to look at.

***

Speaking of Shakers, I fantasize sometimes about having nothing in a home beyond the necessities. 

Possessions cost us something to own, even after we're done paying for them.

Oh, to cut and cut and cut and give away and sell right down to the bone.  But the trick, I suppose, would be defining "necessity."

***

Josh and his next door friend, Josh, are playing Legos as I write.  I love eavesdropping.  Right now, they are debating whose father would win a fight, because both Dads are "so strong." 

So boy.

Gemma has never had this debate--or one like it--ever. 

***

The thing about his age--Gemma's, too, still--is that the basic questions are very clear. 

Dog?  Awesome.

4-Square?  Great to be King.

Daddy?   Strong.

Legos?  Necessary.




 

Un-Canned

We have a huge wooden horse in our house.  Not quite life-size.  Small pony size, really. 

It is made of teak, carved in Thailand.  It stands with a rope around its neck that is bolted to the wall because if it needs not to fall on anyone. 

The tail comes out--its big, black, wooden tail.  I had it resting up high, out of reach, because the kids kept knocking it out of the horse.  The tip is already chipped off. . .

But then the kids started to keep things in the hole that holds the tail.  It's not an anatomically reminiscent hole or anything.  But it is a hole.  And I was annoyed to find little papers, beads, plastic army men and, occasionally, food in the tail-hole of our horse.

So I put the tail back in. 

***

We have been eating pistachios lately. Un-shelled.  Which means they are still in their shells. That's the kind of word that drives me crazy.  "Un-shelled." 

***

[They are delicious, by the way.  Now and then, I'll get one that isn't cracked open a bit, one that's completely closed up.  It hurts to throw this kind away, but what am I going to do?  Crack a tooth to get at a nut that costs about  7 cents?]

***

I was buying a bike once at Sears, the store my Dad requested that we always check first before purchasing somewhere else because he was a career Allstate man and Allstate was a "member of the Sears financial network." 

Fine.  Bikes at Sears were suitable for my needs: to ride to and from my summer job.

I found one I liked.  Good look.  Good price.  Wrong seat.  I wanted a big 'ole 3-speed seat, the kind with big springs on the bottom that really holds the whole rump, you know? 

The seat on this bike was a racing seat.

I told the salesman that I wanted this bike with that seat.

He told me it couldn't be done. 

I said that of course it could be done.  All he had to do was take the seat off of one bike and put it onto another.

He said, "Ma'am, I can't just cannibalize a bike because you want a certain seat."

I said, "I'm not asking you to eat the bicycle.  I'm just asking for one of a hundred seats you have available."

He ended up making the switch for me.  But I found out years and years later--just a few months ago--that his use of the verb "cannibalize" was in fact a proper use. 

So.  Shame on me. 

Still have that bike.  And that very same seat.  It rides perfectly.

***

[The use of this word came to my attention when a friend of mine--an Air Force Academy grad--was telling a story in which they "had canned the plane."

"Canned?"

"Cannibalized it, so the parts got sent to be used in other planes."

Huh.

And "canned" also is slang for "getting fired."  Oh, the wonders. . .]

***

Our couch is from the first year of our marriage.  For a while, it was the only piece of furniture in our household that I had chosen and I've always really liked it.  Big.  Overstuffed.  A sleeper-sofa to boot, which came in handy the night my ankle was broken and I had to avoid injuring it even further before my surgery the next day.

The back cushions are all out of shape now.  Frumpy.  Lumpy.  Uncomfortable to sit against.

So I took them off and stowed them below a desk in our foyer because--think about this--where else am I going to put two giant sofa cushions? 

I haven't decided if I will follow through with one suggested re-shaping solution, to cut out the right shape from an egg-carton-type-cushion and fit it into the upholstery.  Right now, we have bed pillows in co-ordinating  pillowcases and the couch has never been more comfy.

But if I get rid of those two cushions, the couch is ruined forever! 

But I can't keep them in the foyer forever, either.

The kids like them, though. They make for a soft fort in the space beneath the desk.

From that fort, they can look up and see our huge wooden horse, bearing down on them as though angry.  Or, maybe from down there, it looks like a horse that is happy just to prance by.