Easter at Two Houses

A Story by Catie Rose

A young girl has two vastly different experiences on Easter on her mother and father's side of the family.

I sat at the kitchen table in my puffy yellow dress and waited for my family. Mom was in the bathroom with Ali, trying to comb down her curls and make them stay, and dad was still asleep, even though we were suppose to be at his mother's house in thirty minutes and it took almost that long to get there. I had been up an hour already, excited, I loved visits to nanny's house. Mom wasn't as happy about it. Not that nanny wasn't nice to her, nanny was nice to everyone by nature, but mom hated the fact that her husbands family was uneducated. They all finished middle school, for the most part, but a high school graduate in the peter's family was a rare sight. Mom was always smart, straight A's in high school and a thrown away college scholarship, just not smart enough to take her chances to get out of miserable Jackson County.

After Ali was dressed and combed mom ushered her into the living room and sat her down across from me. From over the counter I could see her hair, poking up in some places at the top, mom had done her best but I knew it would be a frizzled mess by the end of the day. I sometimes envied my sister's hair, when it was styled right the curls were downright beautiful, mine was straighter than a stick and curling irons never could make much of a dent in it. We had a seven year age difference. At the time I was ten and she was three, and I already hated her with every fiber of my being. I was unused to sharing anything, having gone so long as an only child, especially the affection of family. When Ali was born she seemed to get all of it.

Mom pulled dad into the living room behind her and grumbled at him for sleeping in so late even though she had woken him three, no four, times already. This broke into a small argument that was only broken by dad starting to nod off again. For as long as I can remember my dad had a sleeping problem. It wasn't often that I saw him awake, and when I did he was still drowsy with tiredness, but mom tried her best to yell him awake every day. She just rolled her eyes this time and shook him awake again and told him to go to the car, then the same to Ali and me, so we all went out and filed into the big white van that mom drove.

when we got to nanny's everyone was already there. Uncle Jon and his wife, Sheena, waved as we walked in and I ran to them and asked where Jacob and Amy were. On that side of the family I was the oldest child. Jacob was next after me, two years younger, then his sister Amy, a year younger than him, they were my only options for playmates at dad's family events. I ran off to find them and heard Ali trodding behind me, I didn't want her there, she always tried to follow me, so I ran a little faster out the door and around to the back porch where Jacob and Amy were playing underneath the tall tree that held our almost tree house. Papawl had promised to build us one for years before that, but the farthest he ever got was a few boards on a low hanging branch that would eventually fall to a rain storm.

I quickly joined in their game of princess rescue and told them to ignore my sister when she came trodding around. As the oldest and, thanks to my mom's pushing, smartest of the three of us I found it easy to manipulate or at least bully them into doing whatever I said. We played for a fair amount of time before nanny stuck her head out and called us in for supper. While my cousins were excited at the thought of food I was a bit disappointed, I knew nanny wouldn't have any foods that I would eat, I was too picky to be as big as I was. Ali had gone in long before us, given up trying to play when we continuously ignored her, so she was already seated at the children's table when we stepped into the kitchen. I looked over the food and found it unsatisfactory, so i told nanny that I wasn't hungry, I would shuffle something from mamawl's cubbard later when we went to mom's family's Easter party. since I wasn't eating I went into the living room where papawl sat, watching a dusty western on the television, and asked him if I could watch cartoons.

Ali was the first done with their food at the children's table, so she came to the living room too, I ignored her when she sat down on the floor beside me. That was a rule at Nanny's house, one that papawl made and enforced, children sit on the floor or in the plastic children's chairs so that the adults can have the couch and arm chairs. After a few more minutes Jacob and Amy came to join us. dad, uncle Jon, and uncle Jodie came out of the kitchen not long after them and told us that we had to stay inside while they hid the eggs and no peeking or we couldn't go. That wait was always the hardest twenty minutes of my young life. Nanny always hid four cartons worth of eggs on Easter, three real cartons and one batch of plastic eggs filled with money or candy, whichever kid found the most eggs got a prize, usually five dollars.

When the eggs were hidden the men came back in and we were let loose. I ran for the hiding places that they always used, the hole in the pine tree, inside the porch flower pots, inside the mail box, then I went to look for the others. As I passed Amy, whose dad was helping her, I snuck an egg out of her basket. My dad was helping Ali, and I was secretly hoping that uncle Jodie would come help me since he had no children of his own, but he only stood on the porch and smoked his cigarette. I didn't win the contest. I did get some money from the eggs, three dollars, and some candy, but I was okay with what I got. We didn't stay long after that, mom didn't want to, so I hugged nanny goodbye and told her I'd see her later. Then we were on the way to mamawl's house.

Mamawl was my mom's mom, she pretty much raised me, and as much as I loved going to nanny's I loved going to mamawl's more. Before Ali was born we lived beside mamawl in an apartment above the garage, that was my first house, I saw my grandparents whenever I wanted. We pulled into the driveway, freshly black topped, where there were only four other cars parked. While dad had plenty of brothers mom only had one, Chris, so besides my grandparents he was the only other person there. He was there with his second wife, sheila, and their two kids Brandon and Drew. They were step brothers. I don't remember a time before Drew was married into the family, I don't even remember Chris' first wife, so he was family as far as I could tell. They were the same age, three years older than me, and I had to force myself into their games because they wouldn't play with me. This was the last year that Brandon would show up to any family things, his mother got custody not long after, he wasn't allowed to see his dad until he turned eighteen.

The first thing I did when I got inside was run to mamawl. She was standing by the oven and talking to sheila about the Easter bible story. She patted my back when I wrapped my arms around her legs, the only thin part about her, she was like an upside down bowling pin as far as weight distribution. Mom sat down beside papawl on the couch and dad stood uncomfortably beside her until she told him to sit down. That was one way to keep him awake, put him around her family, he was anxious around them all. Mom's family didn't like him, not at all, because in their eyes he ruined her. When I was done listening to the grown up conversation going on in the living room I made my way to the back room where the toys and games were kept. Ali had beat me there, sitting in the floor and playing with the few generic brand barbie dolls there were, and Drew and Brandon were sitting in the corner with their baseball cards.

I went to the boys and stood over them for a minute, watching and not understanding as they talked about them men on the cards, they ignored me. So I decided I would start a conversation to get their attention. I asked how many eggs they were going to try to get. There was silence before they laughed at me.

"We aren't hunting eggs." Brandon said, looking at me like I was stupid, I frowned. "We're too old for that." Beside him Drew nodded in agreement and shuffled through the cards in his hand.

When the time to hunt eggs came it was only me and Ali. I was too embarrassed that I was a ten year old hunting against a three year old to actually hunt for eggs. I picked up one but felt everyone staring at me, judging me, so I pretended to go around the back to look. I went behind the pool and sat down on the ground, not caring that my dress would get dirty, and I tried not to cry. I knew if I did Drew and Brandon would call me a cry baby. So I dug in the dirt with my fingers for a while before I heard mamawl calling for me from the back porch. I stood and walked around the pool. I told her I was playing and would come in later, so she went back inside, I had failed not to cry.