Easter with Eggs and Chicks

When I was growing up, my family did the traditional Easter morning of dressing up in spring dresses and new patent leather shoes.  Mom always had an Easter hat. Oh how I wish I had a picture of Mom in one of her Easter hats. Then off to Loche Arbor Baptist Church for Easter Sunday Service.

Lenora, Debbie, Me with 2 chicks on my shoulder

Grandsons get supervised play with my chicks.

But this time of year was also about Easter eggs and baby chicks.  Back when I was a child, Daddy always bought us each a dyed chick.  They would be blue, green, orange and etc.  Today "No dyed chicks" is the only city ordinance in Shreveport regarding livestock. Of course with my mini urban farm, I don't want that to change. Anyway, yellow or black chicks are great.  Poor little chicks never did live to grow up.  We played and played with them.  Yes, now I think it is animal cruelty and I've never given an animal to my children or grandchildren for Easter.  But Lenora, Debbie and I have some great and sad memories of the chicks and rabbits we got for Easter.


When I was about 6, we had a Chihuahua named Lady, who slept with me. I loved my little chick so much that I decided it would sleep with me too.  I don't know why my parents didn't talk me out of that.  The chick slept on one side of me in a shoebox and Lady slept on the other side. The next morning, I awoke to a very tragic scene.  In the box was a beak and one foot.  Obviously, Lady had a midnight snack.





I still make pets out of my chickens.  Though my mother still tries to tell me that chickens are for eggs or for frying, not pets.

Me and Sunny the green egg layer

Why Sandy was Born on April 17.

On April 16, 1968, my mother and I were standing at the calendar counting the days until the due date of her sixth child.  It seemed to me, at age 13, that Mom had been pregnant for a year. Mother was so tired and I was tired of her being so tired.  We counted 6 weeks until the due date of May 25th.

Me and Sandy

All the girls in the family had been wishing for another girl. This would make 5 girls. But remember back then you didn't get an ultra sound and know the baby's gender before it was born.  So we wished until the last minute. We wanted her to be named Samantha Annette Murphy after the witch on the TV show Bewitched. We could call her Sam.  Mom and Dad didn't seem to like that name.

Anyway, when Mom and I counted that she still had 6 weeks, I said, "No, you are going to have her tonight."  Mom said, "No.  We wouldn't want that to happen.  Babies born that early don't survive."
I said, "Oh yes. She is coming tonight and she will be okay."   

It was a school night so I had to go to bed early.  Later that night, Mom went into labor.  She wanted to wake me up before she went to the hospital. But she always put school first, so she left us all asleep.  Her 6th child, born in the early hours of April 17th, turned out to be a very health girl.  She and the doctor had obviously miscalculated. Mom and Dad named her Sandra Elaine.

I was determined to go see the new baby at the hospital. Back then to get on the maternity ward one had to be 15 years old.  Dad and I decided it would be okay if I appeared to be 15.  At 13, my parents did not let me wear makeup.  But to appear 15, they let me wear Mother's makeup.  I got all dress up and thought I looked at least 15, maybe older.  I did get to go see the new baby through the window of the nursery. But the next day when Dad went to the hospital, the nurse told him that his little girl was not allowed on the maternity ward.  I really was very deflated that she could tell that I was not 15.

I carried Sandy everywhere.  Mostly we went to church.  Even if Mother didn't go, I still took Sandy.  Once I over heard an elderly lady say, "That girl is too young to have a baby."  But I loved babies and especially my baby sister.

So Happy Birthday, Sandy.  Hope you like April 17 as your birthday instead of May 25th.  I just couldn't wait that long.

My Grandmother's Rose Bush

The cutting I took from my grandmother's rosebush is blooming now.  It is at this time every year I think of her.  She is likely the reason I have chickens in my backyard.  I used to love to help her gather the eggs, because her chickens laid eggs all over the place; even under her house.  It was at least 3 feet off the ground, so I could stoop and go get them.  4/9/2012

When I was growing up, my family lived on the same dirt road as my father's mother. I remember as a small child walking to Grandma Murphy's house and picking a bouquet of wild flowers along the way.  This was a ritual that I engaged in several times a week.  Grandma Murphy always smiled and received the handful of flowering weeds as though they were long stem roses.  She had the familiar vase right within reach.

Grandma's appearance disguised the amount of strength she had. Her very petite, thin body would make one think she was frail.  But this opinion could only be held by one who had no knowledge of her past or present life.  Being widowed at about thirty-eight years old, Grandma had to raise 12 children by herself.  Her youngest child, Aunt Cordie, was only six months old when her husband, my grandfather, died. My father was one of her 8 rowdy sons.  Even as a child, I could imagine what a challenge that must have been. I had heard stories about how she had picked cotton to support her family.  They always had a huge garden and raised chickens.  She was a devout Christian and walked five miles with her children to attend Loche Arbor Baptist Church every Sunday.  It probably made more of an impression on me that Grandma never talked about doing these things and having difficult times.  She was always focused on the task at hand. 

After her children were grown, she still raised a large garden and had a yard full of chickens.  I would often find her out working in her garden or toting buckets of water to it; since it was quite a distance from her house.

I used to crawl under her house and gather the eggs for her.  I still smile when I remember her solution to chicken snakes getting her eggs.  She put plastic eggs in the hens' nests.  She said that the snakes would swallow the real and plastic eggs whole. Then climb up on a tree limb and fall to the ground to break them. But the plastic egg would not break, so it could not be digested and the snake would die. 

As a small child I was highly amused by this story and envisioned a lumpy snake climbing a tree and jumping off a limb to break the eggs.

My grandma died in 1983, a year after I moved to Shreveport.  Ten years had passed, I don't recall even thinking about her during this time. She seemed like a very distant part of my life, both in miles and years.  I was going through a very bad time in my life. My marriage of 15 years was ending.  I was very depressed. I didn't know how I was going to get my life back on track.  It amazed me that the answer came in a dream I had about my grandmother.

I was not conscious of what a role model of strength and courage Grandma had been to me, until I made one of those visits with her, as I often did as a child.  But now I was dreaming.  She and I were walking through her yard and she was showing me all her rosebushes.  As I held the blossoms and inhaled their fragrance, she told me their names and where she had gotten them.  One rosebush dominated the others.  It was a huge bush in her backyard.  No other bush had the heavily perfumed purple roses it had.  As I walked through the yard with Grandma, I felt strength and confidence growing inside of me.  I realized that because I was her grandchild, I had inherited much of her strength and resilience.  That there was no adversity that I could not overcome.  I awoke the next morning in a whole different frame of mind; ready to move on with my life.  Through this dream Grandma Murphy had bequeathed her strength and courage to me.

Several months after that dream, I was visiting my brother, Frank, who at the time, was living on our old home place.  In a vase on his dining table was a bouquet of fragrant purple roses.  A chill went down my spine and I asked him where he had gotten the roses.  Sure enough, they had come from Grandma's yard.

I responded to this discovery by asking Frank to get a shovel and take me to the bush so we could dig it up.  It was challenging just wading through the thicket that now engulfed what had once been a well-tended yard.  The rosebush was huge.  After struggling with the thorns and underbrush, I had to be content with 6 pieces from the roots that looked like sticks.

I planted them in my yard in Shreveport.  Several years later, when I married Don and we moved to a different house, I tried to transplant that rosebush.  But it died.  I returned to Grandma's rosebush and dug up some more roots. It is one of those very fragrant old roses that only blooms once a year.  In spring I watch and wait for it to bloom.  This is the15th year the bush has been in this yard.  When it blooms, I inhale its strong fragrance and allow my grandma's strength to be reborn in me.