Easter Lilies

Last week I walked into a supermarket and just inside the door was a huge display of Easter Lilies.  I buried my nose in the first one at face level and immediately was transported back to childhood.  Our town, a burg of only a thousand people, had an annual Easter egg hunt in the local park — though the eggs weren’t so much hidden, as strewn around the ground so even the littlest kids could get one.  Each real egg had a number painted on it and afterwards, the kids trooped downtown to match that number with a basket of goodies displayed in one of the stores.  Stores weren’t usually open on Sundays except during the tourist season and looking back, I can’t imagine that the local businessmen and women enjoyed postponing their Easter dinner until the hordes of kids came through, looking for their designated baskets.  Lent was serious business in those days and Easter meant it was over. I looked forward to gorging on all the chocolate that I had given up for six weeks. Easter meant new clothes, including a hat, gloves and shiny white patent leather shoes if you happened to be a girl. One year we woke up to find that a storm had blown through overnight and we trudged to church through snow a foot deep. Sticking my nose into that Easter Lily reminded me of all that stuff.  I got my groceries and headed out but when the automatic doors opened, I stopped, shoved my cart over to the side and went back for one more whiff of the past.