~ CHICKENS and EASTER ~

One sure sign of spring is the arrival of the large flat cardboard box with round holes punched all over, and tiny peeps coming from inside. It’s the baby chicks Mama ordered! I’m not sure where they come from, but there’s much excitement around our house the day the mailman brings them.

We stand close by as Mama carefully opens the box with a sharp knife. Packed inside are these tiny fluffy yellow balls—baby chicks, cheeping and moving about. Mama already has a place laid out for them—a pen made with chicken wire, set up in the spare room. It has upside down watering bottles, where water gurgles down into a circular tray. There’s also a tin feeding trough with holes to peck in. On the bottom are newspapers to catch droppings, which we’ll have to change daily.

Each of us helps lift these quivering balls into their new home. They must be so glad to get out after their long trip. Sometimes, one or two don’t make it, lying stiff and cold in the box.

Mama counts each as we take them out, otherwise it would be too hard to keep track of how many there are. We’re supposed to get thirty.

“One chick, two chicks, three chicks—” we all repeat after Mama.

Mama used to keep eggs in a warm metal incubator in the basement and get new chicks to hatch from the eggs, but she says having them sent by mail is easier and faster.

You can order so much stuff from the catalog, even Christmas presents. You want it, you order it. I think all you need is stamps. But you might need money, too. Course, I don’t worry too much about it, as we kids never order stuff, or pay for our Christmas presents, just those we buy for each other. Mama orders quite a few things by mail. But not too many boxes come from the catalog these days.

The chicks are soon cheeping in their new play yard.

From then on, we each have our chores with the chicks—watering, feeding, and cleaning. I love to just sit by the pen and watch their antics. There are twenty-eight pets to play with, not just one. They’re also pets we can keep inside our house. We hear their voices all day and sometimes at night. They cuddle together in clumps at night to sleep, then they’re up real early, peeping for food.

We watch as they begin to grow bigger each day. Their feathers, no longer fuzzy, start turning whitish and scraggly. Pretty soon, Mama says, “I think it’s time for the chicks to go out to the chicken coop.”

By then, we’re mostly ready for them to leave too.

In our backyard, we have this chicken coop with a high wire- fenced yard. Here they can roam all day, scratch in the dirt, and cluck to each other. They lay their eggs in nest boxes nailed on the walls inside the coop where they sleep at night.

Eventually, the time comes when one of the chickens has to be killed for a Sunday dinner. I try never to watch, or be near the dreadful deed. However, whenever I see the chopping block next to the coop, with dark red stains, or the sharp hatchet hanging on the garage wall, I imagine—Chop—a chicken’s head being cut off. Sometimes I really hear a chicken squawking loudly, then dead silence. I know what’s happening, even if I try to block it out.

I don’t stay around to see Mama do the rest either, pulling off feathers, cleaning the insides out, all before putting it in the oven. So I feel somewhat sad when these little chicks leave the protection of our home, not knowing how they’ll end up.

Mama says, “Chickens have a good life. They don’t have to work, get their food free, and don’t even pay rent for their housing.”

Still, I don’t like the way they end up. Even if I love the taste of roast chicken, I try not to remember how it got on the platter. I wonder if a chicken can wish on its own wishbone.

What would it wish for?

I do like gathering eggs when they’re still warm. If there’s lots, that means an angel food or sponge cake with the roast chicken dinner. Mmm. Just thinking about them, I can almost taste those sweet cakes with their sticky gooey frosting.

So chickens add some nice things to our lives without too much fuss. Our country cousins have cows, horses, and pigs, and they have to work much harder. When they visit, they always have to leave “to get home to milk the cows and feed the pigs.” I’m happy to just have chickens in our lives and house once a year.

springtime is when Easter arrives, too. It’s always on a different Sunday because it has to do with Passover. I do look forward to that Sunday, but it doesn’t hold the same looked-forward-to feeling Christmas does. Nothing tops that.

We do anticipate the Easter Bunny’s visit. Easter morning, I’m excited to get up and go into the kitchen. There it all is. Such a wonderful sight. The kitchen table has an ironed white tablecloth over the cracked oilcloth. The Easter Bunny came secretly during the night, filling the colored straw baskets at each of our places with chocolate eggs, marshmallow chicks, and colored jelly beans.

In the center is the sparkling carnival glass bowl, piled high with brightly colored boiled Easter eggs. The floor is scrubbed and waxed. It’s the prettiest our kitchen ever looks. I stand there and look at it all for the longest time. But pretty soon the other kids are there, hungry for the candy, but we’re not allowed to eat any till Mama says it’s okay. Pretty soon, she’s there too.

“Well, look at all the Easter presents the bunny has brought you children. I guess candy fasting for Lent is over.” Before her last word is out, we’re all digging in our baskets.

“That’s enough now. No eating anything till after church!”

Mama starts boiling different eggs for Daddy on Easter, using onion skins to give them a burnt orange color. “An old Polish tradition,” she says.

I’m glad we have our own colored eggs, because Daddy’s always have soft insides. “Because he likes them that way,” Mama answers if we ask about it. Luckily, Easter rabbits don’t bring us his kind of soft eggs. Magic rabbits don’t need onion skins for their colors, either.

Where do they get their colors? Flowers, maybe?

Of course, Easter is a religious holiday too. It begins with Ash Wednesday, when the priest puts ashes on our foreheads, followed by forty days of Lent. We all do penance, saying extra prayers, walking the stations, making sacrifices, which mostly means not eating candy. We don’t have to fast and abstain as the adults do. They can only eat one full meal a day and not eat meat on some days. But as most meals are prepared for adults, we observe some of their food rules by default. We do many things by default.

On Palm Sunday, we get blessed palms in church and put them up in our house, usually sticking them behind picture frames on the wall.

The last week of Lent is Holy Week, one of the holiest weeks of the year. We go to special church services with our classmates on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Even though we don’t have regular school these days, we’re still expected to show up at church. Mama makes sure we do.

Good Friday has a solemn grimness to it. Special Tre Ore church services are held from noon till three o’clock. All the statues are covered in purple cloths. The sacristy light is out, a sign that no hosts are in the church today. There’s no organ music either. Even though we hear the story about Jesus dying so many times, it still makes me sad to hear it over again, especially on Good Friday. It’s even painful to see Him still suffering on that big crucifix hanging above the front altar.

We all march up to the altar in a line after the Tre Ore service. We kneel and kiss the relic of the real cross, then quietly leave the church.

Many times, the sky is dark that day too. Sometimes there’s huge thunderstorms. Mama says it’s a reminder of what a sad day it is. The whole earth is crying. She reminds us that there were storms and earthquakes when the day really happened. I’ve seen pictures in holy books of the earth opening up the day Jesus died. They’re kind of scary pictures. Bad things can be in holy books, too.

Nothing in town is open from noon till three. All the movie theaters close down that night, too. “Remember, keep the radio off, and no music from twelve to three today. No talking either. You just keep praying during that time,” Mama tells us. So we keep mostly silent, and point our fingers instead of talking. We’re supposed to be praying, but it’s hard to keep prayers going for such a long time. I try, but other thoughts keep coming into my head. I don’t think I’m going to make it to being a saint. It’s not as easy as I thought it might be.

There’s always lots to do at home to prepare for Easter. All week, Mama’s busy baking and cleaning, and we all help her. The day before, we lay out our Sunday clothes, make sure our shoes are polished, and try on new or old Easter bonnets. The night before, we have our hair washed, and take a longer bath. Once in our beds, we talk about the Easter Rabbit and what he might bring us before happily falling asleep...

Then lo, it’s the glorious Easter morning. Church bells are ringing all around town. We can smell the ham already baking as we get ready to go to Mass in our Sunday clothes, not eating anything before because we’ll be going to Communion. But what we’re really looking forward to is getting home, eating our candies from the baskets, as well as frosted rolls and colored Easter eggs.

Later, we’ll be having a delicious Easter ham dinner and the white iced Lady Baltimore cake with creamy filling that’s already waiting on the fancy cake stand.

It’s a day filled with so many good things. Plus, there’s usually no school the week after, so the sadness of the preceding week doesn’t stay around for too long. But Holy Week does make life different. It’s a time that makes us think more about death and suffering. Only you can’t think about it too much, Mama says, because there’s so much to live for.

I do want to keep living. Of course, it’s mostly old people that die, so I don’t have to worry about dying right now. I will though, some day, when I’m really old. I wonder when that day will be, and what I will look like by then.