Reflections on the Fourth Week of Spring - Three Mothers and My Easter Eggs Part 2

    “They’re pretty,” said Mary Ann, our eighty-three year old neighbor who’d come by to drop off a piece of misdirected junk mail. Chuckling, she’d admitted the mail was just an excuse for a chat.

    I’d listened to the latest on her mean ex-boyfriend then switched the conversation to children and grandchildren before walking her out front and cutting a bouquet of daffodils to give her.

    Daffodils grew at the foot of the burning bush holding my Easter eggs. Dew and gentle rain had turned solid, vivid colored shells to curiosities with white tops and pastel bottoms reminiscent of the two-toned cars in the fifties.

    “So interesting,” Mary Ann added.

    Did her “interesting” carry the coded writers’ group meaning of too weird, wacky, or inept for a polite comment? Probably not. Her failing eyesight must have blended the whites and pastels in amusing ways.

    Hanging brightly colored eggs to commemorate three mothers–Mom who’d taught me to dye eggs, my sister-in-law’s mother Martha who’d blown the heirloom shells, and Spence’s mother Priscilla who’d hung colored eggs in her front yard tree–had failed a second time.

    The day after Mary Ann’s visit, I drove to town and checked for craft paints at Jo-Ann Fabrics. A child’s set of acrylics professed to wash with soap and water while wet but dry to a permanent finish. Permanent would be long enough.

    On Good Friday, I spread newspaper on the kitchen table and gathered three bread pans, a package of wooden shish kabob skewers, rags, and the child’s paint set. Then I walked out front to the burning bush. Bumblebees buzzed around my legs while I pulled off a two-toned shell, blew into it to clear bush fragments, and inhaled whiffs of vinegar.

    Back inside, I easily slipped a skewer through a shell’s enlarged-from-sliding-along-branches end holes. Letting the bottom of the shell rest against my left thumb, I painted with the child’s eighth of an inch wide plastic bristles. Creamy paint streaked with lumpy edges and thin middles. In vain, I stroked to smooth the paint.

    When Spence walked around the table to pick up the compost canister, I said, “Do you think brush strokes will matter?”

    Compost container in hand he said, “Whose your audience?” 

    “People passing in vehicles.”

    “They won’t see the strokes. It will be fine.” He stared at my brush and half painted purple egg. “Why are you using such a tiny brush?”

    “I don’t have a larger one.”

    Spence set the container by the door and headed for the basement.

    Rumble, crash, and rattle floated up before he reappeared. Picking up the compost, he said, “I don’t have one either.”

    I painted shells on skewers, set skewers across the tops of bread pans so the eggs could dry, washed the brush, and wiped my messy fingers on the rags. While I worked, I thought of Mom, Martha, and Priscilla. All three mothers had painted. Mom painted walls, Martha painted butterflies on wood slabs, and Priscilla painted rural landscapes with houses and barns. I didn’t remember any painting eggs shells, but I heard their advice. “Why go to all that bother . . . buy plastic eggs . . . and use a coupon.”

    When the painted shells dried, I slipped them onto the burning bush for the third time.

    Brightly colored eggs commemorate three mothers this Easter Sunday.

    If I pack the shells carefully and if the end holes don’t enlarge too much, I will have commemorative eggs for neighbors passing in vehicles to view on many Easter Sundays to come.

    Mary Ann will be a passenger in one of those vehicles. Even with her bad eyesight, she’ll see vibrant colors on the burning bush and comment, “They’re pretty . . . so interesting.”