That's Life: A Grandmother's Better Than a Basket of PeepsBy Phyllis McGuire
iBerkshires Columnist
07:49PM / Monday, April 06, 2009
When I was a little girl, I would look longingly at the Easter baskets displayed in a window of a store located a few blocks from the apartment building in the Bronx where my family lived.
But my parents never surprised me or my two sisters with an Easter basket; they could not afford to buy what they considered frivolous things, compared to food, clothing and shelter.
My cousin Barbara, who lived a 15-minute walk from our home, would let me choose from the sweets in the Easter baskets her paternal grandmother gave her every year.
Best friends of the same age, Barbara and I enjoyed many an hour together, playing hopscotch and jump rope. Rainy days we would play indoors with Barbara's doll house and other toys, which far outnumbered mine.
Though Barbara was a pretty blue-eyed blonde with a peaches and cream complexion and I was a plain, olive-skinned child, I was not envious of her good looks nor her abundance of toys but only of her good fortune in having a grandmother.
 How I would have relished having a grandmother. A grandmother who would roast a turkey, a ham and a loin of pork for the family of 17 who gathered in her home most Sundays. A grandmother who was slow to anger and fast to forgive faults, such as tracking mud into the living room, or spilling gravy on a white linen tablecloth. A grandmother who would send you home with a bunch of pink peonies from her garden.
One year a few days before Easter, Barbara's grandmother, Mrs. Reed, invited me to Easter dinner at her home. I was excited about going to that faraway place I knew only as "the country."
And that Easter Sunday after attending Mass with my family, I went with my Aunt Irene, Uncle Willie, cousin Barbara and her brother, Harold, to visit the elder Reeds, the only people I knew who lived in a private house.
Soon after we arrived, Mrs. Reed opened the door in the kitchen that lead to the back yard: "Phyllis and Barbara, go out and play. Dinner won't be ready for a while."
 Mrs. Reed joined us for a few minutes, "to get a breath of fresh air" before continuing to cook. As she pointed out the flowers in her garden, calling them by name, I said. "Those red tulips are so perfect, it's hard to believe they are real."
"Later, I'll have your Uncle Willie cut some so you can take them home," she said.
When Barbara and I were called into dinner, Mrs. Reed showed Barbara where she was to sit at the table. Upon that chair there was an Easter basket that contained a big chocolate bunny, what I assumed were chocolate eggs packaged in gold foil, yellow and white marshmallow chicks, dozen of jelly beans, and more.
Though Mrs. Reed motioned for me to sit in the chair next to Barbara's, I did not move.
 "She's made a mistake. That chair is meant for Harold," I thought, for upon it was a basket exactly like Barbara's.
"Go ahead, sit down," Mrs. Reed said as she handed the basket to me. "Happy Easter, honey. "
I still wonder if what made that Easter memorable for me was not just receiving an Easter basket but being the object of what I had so missed as a child — the kindness of a loving grandmother. |
