Gravy, Tiny Houses, and Easter Eggs
I was outside in the snow in my nice white church shoes tap-tapping around while I waited for my mom and brother. My mom got me my white shoes special for me for my First Communion and I’m wearing them today with my Communion dress and my hair tied up with a ponytail, the curls sticking out the front. I loved swirling in my dress as I dodged the small piles of snow built up around the driveway. Most of the snow had melted but in West Michigan many Easter Sundays were decorated with dirty piles of snow left along the edges of driveways and sidewalks not yet melted from a winter full of shoveling and plowing it all into hills wherever they can fit. Just a month before, we were in our snowsuits climbing up those hills and digging out caves to cuddle up away from the wind.
My new Communion dress was a bonus for Easter. Despite not wanting to look too girly most of the time, I liked being able to wear a cute new dress as I hauled around my Easter Basket. It was a whole look that I embraced on special days like that.
Easter that year was at the end of Spring Break. We had a week off of school that we spent with a babysitter while my mom worked, but today we’re all out as a family.
I waited in the driveway to leave for church and my Great Grandma Shorty’s house. The whole family was meeting up there after mass. My maternal Grandma Booba, or Fran to the adults, lived with Shorty most of my childhood. And all her siblings, my mom’s siblings and some of her cousins, and all their kids (my cousins and second cousins) planned to join us at the little yellow house for dinner.
Shorty’s real name was Thelma, she lived in her little yellow house on Buchanan for more than 70 years. Her and her husband built the house in the 1920s for $1,000 and she raised my grandma and her two sisters there, while her husband ran a gas station and oil change downtown. They lived a solid midwestern life, the girls went to Catholic school and my grandma tended the house, getting a job later in life after her husband passed. He was much older than her and I never got to meet him.
Shorty got her nickname because she was the shortest person we all knew. Our family was full of people of all varying heights and no matter how tall each of us grew, we had that one exciting moment in our childhood when we were finally taller than Shorty.
Shorty was a caring grandma, but she wasn’t always the most gentle. She taught us how to cook, bake, pick flowers in the yard to give to our moms, and eat ice cream the right way out of a cone on the front porch. She was sweet but often terse. Her nickname seemed to especially fit her well when I heard her gossiping about families at church or giving me advice about life always ending with “Well, life’s a bitch and then you die.” Her outlook on life was unmistakable: do your work on earth for your family, go to church religiously, and stay disciplined with your rosary and words, these things will get you to heaven. It’s not always easy, but it is worth it.
This particular Easter, I was eight and my brother was five. I think our parents were divorced already, but I can’t really remember when they actually got divorced. After a bit of me twirling in the driveway, my mom and brother joined me outside and we piled into the car to head off to Church. My mom raised us Catholic and back then I loved going to church. Church felt like home. I was at peace in our traditions. I loved the organ and seeing my grandma and having donuts in the basement after the service. Church was peaceful and consistent.
Midway through the church service, we went down to Kids’ Church in the basement, to learn about Jesus’s death and color pictures of bunnies. The Kids’ Church room had a little library in it where tiny brown and beige books full of bible verses and covered in dust lined the walls, and a little mirror hung on the wall that was marked with the Sign of the Cross. You could stare into that mirror and follow the directions to sign all on your own. I felt so proud when I was able to sign on my own and take communion with the adults upstairs just a couple weeks before that for the first time.
After Kids’ Church we headed back up to shake hands with all the others sitting around us in the pews and take Communion. After Communion we all filed out of the church ready to head to Shorty’s house for a dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and rolls that Booba piled all in one spot on her plate and cover with gravy. To this day, this is how I still eat all my holiday meals — smothered in gravy.
After dinner, we all went out to Shorty’s yard for an Easter Egg hunt. My mom and her cousins all gathered on the front porch of the little yellow house and got their picture together replicating a picture they all took 20 years before on the same porch.
All my cousins and I tramped around the yard looking for brightly colored plastic eggs in pink, yellow, blue, and green filled with candy and coins. There was always someone crying to their parents if they didn’t get as many eggs as others. If you cried, you got brushed off and sent back off to hunt for more eggs with the encouragement of “you can do it, go get ‘em!”
I loved a good Easter Egg Hunt, the competition was lovely, but more than that, I loved getting out in the sunshine looking for those little eggs. The sunshine and a good puzzle always filled my heart, especially when the stakes were so low.
After the Egg Hunt we sat in the driveway and on the sidewalk in the sun opening up our eggs. We were allowed to eat as much candy as we wanted that day. It was a joyous day to celebrate Jesus and show our love through gluttony (excessive gravy and whoppers). This particular Sunday I regretted my excessive Whopper eating. 30 years later I still cannot eat anything malted.
While we ate our candy and basked in the sun, my mom and her cousins all laughed and drank beer in the yard and on the porch, going in and out through the screen door sharing the one tiny bathroom.
I can remember that bathroom vividly, It was tucked into the corner of the house right next to the tiny kitchen. The kitchen couldn’t have been any more than 10x10 feet on each side and it was always cramped, with a sink full of dishes and a fridge stuffed full of uncovered leftovers. All of us would fit like sardines in the kitchen, living and dining room, maybe filling 300 sq feet at the most with upwards of 20 people with clouds of cigarette smoke filling up any extra space.
The sun was welcomed on this Sunday with such a large group there, because we could all stretch outside. I appreciated having more space but still being able to hear the adults’ talking, catching up on their lives and reminiscing about the past.
Late on in the afternoon, everyone began to dissipate, all hugging and kissing each other goodbye. My mom’s family was always so close to one another, never leaving without a hug and an I Love You. The love and connection between them was strong then. As all of us offspring have grown older and built our own families that connection has begun to dissipate as well. My mom still connects sometimes with her Aunts or Cousins, but we rarely all get together. Time tends to do that to families. We all grow and spread and the time we get to spend together becomes less and less.
Just this past year, we all gathered for my Grandma Booba’s funeral. Shorty passed close to 20 years prior and by the time we all got to Booba’s funeral we hadn’t been in the same room in more than a decade. The time didn’t seem to feel like it had passed though. We all came together with hugs and I Love You’s just the same, supporting each other in a way we were taught as a foundation for our family. The matriarchs in my family have always brought everyone together. That Easter when I was eight and Booba’s funeral were no different. We all understood our duty to the family. We learned how to show up for each other in that tiny yellow house.
