By Libbie Summers

I don’t remember a warm Easter Sunday. Missouri Easter mornings involved layers. A special dress, tights, wool coat, hat, gloves and shoes so painful they taught me patent leather was a cold conductor.

After Easter Sunday church service and before Easter Sunday lunch service we hunted for colorful eggs. Dad and uncle Ronnie would hide eggs in places only a professional basketball player or a mole could find –a parent’s sick kind of amusement.

According to my mother, the wardrobe for finding the unfindable hard boiled eggs in a lower middle class suburb was “anything goes” on the bottom half and a smart hoodie on top. “Smart” being code for a dull colored hand-me-down hoodie that was cinched so tightly around the head it left a chin mark that stayed well into Passover.

I counted the hoodies I currently have in my closet. There are 9. Each time I wear one, I’m taken back to those Missouri Easters and the fun I had with my sisters and my best friend Bobby. Running around a yard that felt like a football field and trying to beat each other to the next hidden colored egg (one we would never eat) was a this child’s Spring nirvana.
Hoodie up.
Smile wide.
Basket heavy.

These days, I don’t tie the hood of my hoodie up and I still don’t wear patent leather shoes.

Happy Easter! May your memories be as colorful as your basket.

(pictured above outside our home in Missouri.  From l-r Robbie (oldest sister), me, my best friend and cousin Bobby, Debe (middle sister)