By Ann von Dehsen, April 25, 2019 — My childhood Easter memories included Baskets filled with chocolate bunnies and jelly beans, brightly colored eggs about to transform into egg salad, dresses with petticoats that rustled when you moved, church service filled with sweet-smelling flowers and sweet-smelling mothers with conflicting perfume scents resulting in lots of sneezes.
But my biggest Easter memory, for better or worse, is going to Easter dinner at Uncle Howard’s and Aunt Mary Margaret’s. Howard was my father’s half brother [and was] more than 20 years his senior. He was the wealthy relative who worked on Wall Street and lived in a high rise apartment with lots of oriental rugs. He enjoyed cigars, women, and liquor. Aunt Mary Margaret was Howard’s 4th wife — much to the chagrin of my mother and other aunts who were still very fond of wife #3, Mona, currently working as a waitress in NYC.
Now Uncle Howard never had children and although he was pleasant to my sister, me, and our 2 girl cousins, upon our Easter arrival it was obvious that he was not entirely comfortable. Aunt Mary Margaret (MM for short) made no attempt to talk to us beyond “Hello, girls,” as she ushered us into the T.V. room, turned the T.V. on to Roller Derby and handed us a basket of jelly bean-filled Easter eggs. [She] cracked a smile as she shut the door behind her. None of us had any aspirations to compete in the roller derby occupying the T.V. screen, so we were forced to consider other forms of entertainment. Our favorite activity was to write, “Help! We are being held captive in apt 4c!” on strips of paper placed in the plastic eggs & dropping them out the window to the courtyard below. If anyone found our message in this day and age a SWAT team probably would have shown up, but we never received any response to our messages.
We also did our share of snooping, and one year we hit pay dirt – as we pulled a box from the closet filled with Playboy magazines. As we flipped through those pages, we were shocked, appalled, somewhat disgusted, and quite intimidated and concerned over own lack of development so far. Overall, it was a horribly unhealthy and unrealistic way to begin our sexual development, but it sure filled up the time!
When we heard MM’s high heels clicking down the hall, we quickly slid the box under the table. She arrived with T.V. trays adorned with her yearly canned pear bunny salad and pre-portioned Easter dinner. We were too young to appreciate the irony of eating our bunny salad as studied the playmate bunnies.
We knew our visit was coming to an end when we were summoned into the dining room to actually join the adults for dessert – (MM’s traditional egg-shaped vanilla cake decorated with jelly beans). This was also about the time that Uncle Howard’s many martinis became apparent as he began commenting on his sister-in-law’s gorgeous legs & cleavage. So before you knew it we were on our way home, free from Howard & MM for another year.