200th Blog

Easter Sunday and this is my 200th blog entry. Yesterday I was reading Ruby Langford Ginibi's 1988 autobiographical novel 'Don't take your love to town'. At the age of twenty two she had already borne six children and was living with them in a tent on the edge of a river in New South Wales. Each day she fished for yellow belly Perch, shot ducks with her .22 rifle and taught her children to read and write with exercise books and textbooks purchased in the nearby town. She said 'These days we'd be called fringe dwellers but in those times we were just bushies, and plenty of people lived like that, poor whites as well as blacks' (p.84). My own early childhood was marked by poverty - always remembered as parents arguing, the smell of alcohol, unpaid bills and rented abodes filled with scrappy furniture. Poverty is an affliction that remains within your psyche regardless of how much you accumulate in your life. Regardless of the unpleasant memories, there are always many that counteract the sadness experienced in one's childhood; and these memories often circulate around food and family. Easter has always been a pleasant experience for me since early childhood. The Easter egg hunts in the front garden of my grandmother's place in Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn. Searching in and around the large hedgerow that formed the front fence and behind the flowers and shrubs. It was always exciting. Of course, in those days Nan would bundle us off to Mass because we were brought up as Catholics. So Easter Sunday was not only about eating copious amounts of chocolate and hot cross buns but was also about celebrating Christ's ascension into heaven. At school the week before we'd all be decorating eggs (pre-boiled) by first painting a design in wax crayon on the soft white surface and then dipping them in food dye. We always decorated some for Nan and they would be placed in a bowl and put in the centre of the table at our Easter Sunday lunch. Sometimes we'd turn the hard-boiled eggs into chickens by sticking on eyes and a yellow beak made from colored paper and then place it in cotton-wool in a matchbox. Fifty years ago all the chocolate Easter eggs were formed in the shape of eggs, I don't recall ever receiving one in the shape of a rabbit, chicken or Bilby. In my mind Easter is almost always linked to Christmas, because Nan would make two Christmas puddings and keep one to be eaten at Easter. These were also the two celebrations in which cousins, Aunties and Uncles would visit. So, as I write this on Sunday morning I look forward to seeing my son and his girlfriend who are coming over to share Easter lunch. It will most certainly not be traditional fare, for I am making a vegan meal. Much has changed since I was a child half a century ago - much remains the same.