52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 14 "Great"

EASTER MEMORIES ARE THE GREATEST

Today is Easter Monday and a perfect time to write about my favorite yearly holiday - Easter.  While other holidays were special in their own way, Easter was the holiday that I have the most intense memories of.

I was born in St. Joseph, Michigan.  My mother was from St. Joseph as well where she grew up while my father was from Detroit.  When I was a young girl we moved to the Detroit suburbs where I grew up and where my brother was born.  We took summer vacations back to St. Joseph to visit my grandparents and all my mother's many relatives and they were fun times.

Easter was the special holiday every year where we always went back to St. Joseph to celebrate.  Two of my mother's brothers and their families also came from the Chicago area to spend the holiday as well.

We had traditions that never failed to excite me even as the years went by.  We always dressed up and went to church as a family group and my grandparents were so proud to have their family together.  Even after my grandfather died in 1960 we continued to gather as a family with my grandmother and church was a special occasion.  The church was always crowded on Easter and one year the uncles were dragging their feet about leaving the house and when we arrived at the church there were no pews left.  The service was also being played through the speakers into the basement and we had to sit in the basement fellowship hall for the service.  The uncles never made that mistake again!

My grandmother always had Easter decorations around the house.  A glass hen candy dish was always filled with chocolate covered eggs and it sat on the buffet in her dining room.  I have this candy dish now and continue to fill it with Hershey's chocolate eggs each Easter:

There was always a lamb cake as the centerpiece of the dining room table; a white frosted cake my grandmother made from a lamb mold and which was covered with coconut.  I have this mold today and my mother and I have made the cake a few times over the years.  It is not the easiest to maneuver when removing the lamb.  Those little ears don't seem to want to stay on and we have been known to use toothpicks under the frosting to keep them in place; we just need to remember not to bite into the toothpick:

The centerpiece on the buffet, however, was my grandmother's home made Easter egg tree.  In the 1940's she boiled eggs and colored them, poked holes in the ends and blew out the insides, cut a small opening in each egg, filled with artificial flowers, etc and with the insertion of pipe cleaners hung them on the tree using branches she collected from the grounds around Lake Michigan.  This was displayed in a large vase every year without fail.

Today the eggs are down to 23 which is amazing given they are over 80 years old.  I treasure these eggs and wrap them carefully.  A few years ago I had them on my buffet in my living room and the windows were open with a nice breeze blowing in.  Suddenly I heard a big crash and when going into the living room I was horrified to see the Easter egg tree had fallen onto the carpet.  Amazingly not one egg was broken!  I know that was my grandmother in heaven making sure that her decoration was still safe:

This Easter I again had my grandmother's Easter decorations on display and though Easter is much different now I still have the greatest memories of this holiday as well as great memories of my special grandmother.  

This is Easter, 1961, the first Easter after the death of my grandfather when my family and the families of my two uncles gathered again in St. Joseph with my grandmother. 

This picture shows my Uncle Leslie Kijak, my grandmother Ella Kolberg Kijak, my mother, Eloris Kijak Schulte and my Uncle Harris Kijak:

All are gone now but the memories remain!

Copyright 2021, Cheryl J. Schulte