Honey Bunny
For my mother, who always knew.
Today I am sitting. My usual position—chair, desk, screen—wondering if anything will come. It’s Easter Sunday, I’m in the quiet, thinking of my parents, my son, my history.
As a child, Easter filled our home. We attended mass at Saint Anne’s Catholic Church on Main Street, Santa Ana, California. I wore white patent leather shoes with white lace quarter socks and a new dress—always new. My mother made sure her children were dressed well for the celebration. The night before, she boiled three dozen eggs—ours to write on with crayons, ours to dip and color and claim. The following afternoon we scattered into the backyard to find them. My mother placed a basket of chocolates—or a chocolate Easter bunny—at the foot of our beds, waiting to be discovered. Mine was always a white chocolate bunny. She gave me something singular. Four children, and I was her only daughter.
Most of us are aging—wait, all of us are aging. Even me. Especially me. I woke up feeling empty. When my son was small, we celebrated Easter, though we seldom went to mass. Religion never called to me the way the stars did, the moon, the universe and her planets. I am spiritual but not religious. I was brought into Catholicism before I had any say in it—baptized, first communion, confirmation. But even then I didn’t believe it. Even then, they were just stories.
My years were filled with love, disappointments, disasters, accomplishments, failures, education, motherhood—often all at once. Every day I built a life. For many of those years, I forged a career in accounting and finance. It was never who I was. But it was what the life required.
Today I write. I paint. I have returned to a creative life, on my own terms. Some days are filled; others arrive empty. Some stories are published. Others wait inside me, restless, looking for a way out.
I look for clues. I visit memories. I fill the hour with hope.
My mother always knew what I wanted before I did. The white chocolate bunny when the others got milk chocolate. The colors of dye she knew I favored. A new dress, new shoes, my hair always brushed. She never asked—she simply knew.
My mother wanted to give her children more than what had been given to her. Her childhood was difficult. But this was never a topic of discussion. It was something learned slowly, in adulthood. Some things only arrive late.
Easter morning, my mother prepared breakfast—bacon, eggs, grits, buttered Pillsbury biscuits. Our candy and gifts waited until after mass. She packed us into the station wagon and drove us to Saint Anne’s while my father, not a religious man, stayed behind.
It was then that he hid the eggs—alone in the backyard, tucking them into the hedges, the flowerbeds, the crooks of branches. Doing his part, in his own quiet way.
At mass, in shiny white shoes, wearing my new Easter dress, each of us filed from the pews to receive communion. Believing, or learning to believe, or simply doing what children do—following.
I don’t know what year it was when I stopped believing in God the way my mother did. Maybe it was the spiraling years that eroded their marriage. Maybe it was the arguments, or the silences between them that were worse. Maybe it was when my mother would disappear for several days at a time to a Catholic retreat, leaving us behind. Or when my father played golf on Sundays while she ushered us to mass.
What I know is this: my parents were opposite in all the things that mattered. Religion. Politics. Money. All of it. They were two people who had no business being pulled in the same direction.
They separated when I was ten. Divorced when I was twelve.
The years that followed were filled with uncertainty and instability. I learned to pivot rather than stay still. I was stubborn, moody, difficult in the way children absorb what they witness—but I learned to pivot. It was simply how I stayed upright.
Easter was never the same after that. My mother changed too. We stopped attending mass. She worked nights. My father lived in another city, not far but far enough. On the weekends she entertained friends, played music, smoked, drank, and sometimes partied until dawn.
Maybe this was when I had no use for religion.
And yet—she would remind me, in the middle of all of it, that God is everywhere.
He may be everywhere, but she is not here. She is with him, at least I think so. Now and then she visits me in my dreams—telling me I’m beautiful, telling me how much she loves me, telling me how proud she is of me. This morning I woke and I could still hear her. Happy Easter, honey bunny.
Getting up early to hide the Easter eggs for my little boy who would hunt in the garden with a basket in his hand. Watching him these mornings was my Easter treat.
A beautiful tribute to the past. Lovely writing