Mixed Metaphors

“For me, this holiday is a time for reflection, for renewing a spiritual connection, and for experiencing the hope and promise of the new beginnings of the spring season.” — An excerpt from my journal, Perfectly Flawed.

Leading up to Easter this year, I spent a lot of time reminiscing, rereading journal entries from holidays past and Easter-themed blog musings. Holidays, and the family rituals which we grew up with and the memories that remain, are mile markers of our journey in life. They provide a backdrop of the values and traditions of our ancestry and worship, the foundation of our beliefs. From childhood to adulthood, to this third chapter in my life, holiday traditions and rituals have evolved, some things nostalgically remain the same, others changed as I changed, and as the world changed.

Easter Holidays from Childhood

Our family followed the religious beliefs of our paternal ancestry, German-Irish Catholics. Our parish was St. Patrick’s Church. We attended Mass, though not always regularly. My siblings and I attended Sunday school after church and made our First Communions, Confirmations, and some of us married in the church.  Excerpt from Poop Eggs & Lamb Cakes:

Like most holidays I celebrated as a child, Easter was a hybrid of religious traditions, the social culture from the generation in which I grew up, and our own ethnic and family rituals, which we repeated in some familiar fashion every year. Now as an adult, I wax nostalgic, even fondly, remembering some of things I complained about as a child, like getting dressed up in our Easter outfits, including crinoline slips, white gloves and purses, patent leather Mary Jane’s with lacy white anklets and the mandatory Easter bonnet if you were a young Catholic girl growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s and 60s.

Mom and Dad bought us new outfits every year and after the Easter egg hunt and we located our hidden baskets filled with our personalized egg, chocolate in many forms, jelly beans, cream-filled eggs, a plastic egg with money in it and a toy, we’d get dressed up, pose for photos outside, wave to the camera before we’d get into the car, attend Easter Mass, and join our extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins at the “Grams” house, Grandma Lenzke and Great Grandma Flanigan’s third-floor walk-up brownstone apartment on 7th Street in downtown Racine. 

Easter Eve, we’d color eggs. Mom boiled two or three dozen as our family grew. She’d cover the kitchen table with newspaper and the kids would crowd around it with our crayons, the white wax marker to write our names, a spoon in hand ready to dip the eggs in the assembly line of Easter egg dye. Dad would observe and periodically check on our progress, his can of Hamm’s Beer in hand (this too will figure into this memory). After we were finished, one egg would remain and Dad would be ceremoniously beckoned into the kitchen. The last egg was his to transform into the revered Lenzke Family Poop Egg.

Dad, with great fanfare and practiced technique, would begin to dip the egg into each of the colors until it began to change from purple, to green, to burnt orange and brick red. He’d then pour all the egg dyes into the large Pyrex liquid measuring cup until the color changed to inky darkness. Next, a cup of coffee, and finally, the secret ingredient, the remainder of the Hamm’s Beer from his hand. The egg would swim in this concoction until it emerged as the Poop Egg, a perfectly brown egg, not exactly chocolate in color, but more…yeah you get it!

Before we’d go to bed that night, each child would hide their empty Easter Basket for the Easter Bunny to find, and when we woke in the morning, we’d first search for the hidden eggs, followed by our filled baskets. The Poop Egg would be the prized egg to be found on Easter morning. No additional gifts or luck would be attached to it, simply the knowledge and family bragging rights that you found the Poop Egg that year.

Transition to Adulthood

As I became an adult, I joined my family to celebrate Easter, first with my husband and later, after I came out, with my lesbian partners, some years joined by the young children we co-parented who also received small Easter Baskets with their personalized egg, a toy, and of course, Easter candy. Next, the family meal and we’d enjoy the Easter basket with chocolate, jelly beans, and personalized egg in our childhood Easter basket became the highlight of the day. Some years, I traveled the night before and participated in egg-coloring with my youngest siblings still living at home and became Mom & Dad’s Easter Bunny Assistant. More excerpts from Poop Eggs & Lamb Cakes

As the eldest child, I soon became the Easter Bunny’s assistant. After all my younger siblings were tucked in bed and asleep, Mom, Dad, and I would get to work, fulfilling the Easter Bunny’s assignments of hiding eggs, then filling baskets. Like she did earlier in the day, Mom would lay out the baskets for each child, parent, and the Grams in a row like an assembly line. First, the colored plastic grass would be placed then the personalized egg matching the corresponding basket nestled into its grassy bed. With her metal measuring cup in hand, after Dad carried up the bags of candy from the basement where it had been hidden, Mom would carefully measure, scoop, and fill each basket with equal quantities of candy: assorted chocolate, jelly beans, speckled, chocolate-coated, malted milk, faux robin’s eggs, the Easter equivalent of candy corn in pastel colors of Easter shapes and symbols, a plastic egg, sometimes a recycled “L’eggs” pantyhose container with money inside, cream-filled eggs, a chocolate bunny, and a toy.

The Orphan Holidays

This upcoming May, 38-years-ago, I quit drinking. Alcohol colored most family memories (including the Lenzke Poop Egg!) and the traditions we shared to some degree. Sadly, some of our family inheritance was a genetic predisposition to alcoholism on both paternal and maternal sides. It became more challenging for me early in sobriety to engage in the alcohol-infused holidays in which I often overdid it in the past and afterwards had regrets and amends to be made for my behavior.

Gratefully, I helped create a chosen family of lesbian, allies in recovery and their families. Excerpt from The Orphan Holidays:

For me, and a group of my recovering alcoholic, lesbian friends, significant others, and our children, (Easter) was simply one of The Orphan Holidays. For over 20 years, we referred to ourselves as The Orphans. Many of us were estranged from our families, due to distance, or because of who we loved or how we lived our lives. We became a family of choice and created our own rich traditions and rituals.

The Orphan Holidays always featured food, an open door to those who had no other place to go, a safe space to practice recovery, and a gathering place for the families we created. There was Thanksgiving and Christmas of course, a New Year’s Day Pajama Brunch, Easter Dinner, and cookouts for the 4^th of July and Labor Day. The hallmark of the summer, however, was our annual Memorial Day Weekend camping trip. For many of us, Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer, the season opener for bratwurst, camping and communing with nature. Here in Wisconsin that also means sharing time outdoors with mosquitoes, black flies, and if you’re camping in the wild — pesky raccoons.

We alternated Easter Dinner Potlucks at ‘the Donna’s’ homes. Sadly, both friends and hosts have now died, friends Donna Biddle and Donna Salverson. Each knew how to plan an event, set a festive table, and offered members of the community a seat at the holiday, people who had no place to go or preferred the company of our recovering chosen family. There was always an abundance of food, stories, and celebration of the changing season. Often, we’d have an Al-Anon gratitude meeting and afterwards would take a walk and some years, en masse, attend a movie. Often causing a lively ruckus.

Later, my bio family broke our estrangement from the failed alcohol intervention of our father (our mother went into treatment instead and was sober for over 20 years before she died) and reconvened at the funeral of our paternal grandmother to support Dad. Later that year, both of my youngest sisters married, and we wanted our family to be together to celebrate them on their special day.

My long-term partner, Cindy and I created our own traditions. One year, we’d celebrate with ‘The Orphans’, another with one of our bio families, and lastly a year for just the two of us. It created some balance in our lives and acknowledged the traditions we created with our bio and chosen families, and with each other. Grateful.

When I met Cindy’s family for the first time in San Antonio, Texas, we filled Easter baskets for Cindy’s folks, watching them enjoy it like children. I brought an Easter gift and basket for Cindy. Her mother, attempting to deny that I was Cindy’s significant other, acted like she didn’t understand why I gave Cindy a gift. She offered me a separate room to sleep in and I stood my ground and insisted that I’d sleep with Cindy. Oh, My! Looking back, I think she did that to save face, and didn’t challenge me since Cindy I had made the holiday visit special for them. I’m grateful I met Cindy’s mother. It helped me understand Cindy’s tumultuous childhood and family dynamics.

During our years that we celebrated just the two of us, some years we’d make our own Easter Dinner, featuring a holiday ham and dishes from our childhood. We’d sometimes binge watch series like The Sopranos and The L-Word. Other years we’d enjoy the abundance of a restaurant Easter Buffet. There was also the year we tried to get Cindy pregnant using IVF. After the Easter Brunch at the Memorial Union, we sat by the lake at the Union Terrace, watched the ducks, took in the Spring sun, and talked about the symbolism of eggs and fertility. Sadly, it didn’t happen for us.

After Cindy I separated, I revisited the holidays and how I chose to celebrate them. For a while I’d still join ‘The Orphans’, alternate with by family in Racine, and some years I’d make a spiral ham dinner with cheesy hash browns and sides for myself, or invite a friend to join me. I’m most grateful for the Easter Holiday with some of my Racine Family in 2015, the last year we celebrated the holiday with our beloved mother.

Easter Home Alone

The pandemic hit in spring of 2020 and changed everything. Soon we were isolating at home to keep ourselves and our loved ones healthy. Many of us cancelled holiday dinners and gatherings with friends and family. We asked ourselves, how do we celebrate the religious, family, and culinary traditions of the past?

Most of my traditions evolved into secular rituals, the foods I ate, connections with the people I love, and a time to reminisce, reflect, and become renewed as the season changed from winter to spring. Most years, it was a time of hope. The pandemic challenged the belief that we would all survive and be okay. In the end, my family, friends and I were lucky. Grateful.

The first year of the pandemic I cooked the foods I enjoyed from holidays, comfort food and reminders of my childhood, Kringle from my hometown, a glazed spiral ham, cheesy hash brown potatoes, deviled eggs, Cherry Jell-O, buttered rolls, and more. Chocolate of course, the Russell Stover Coconut Cream Eggs, Hershey’s Chocolate Candy Shell Eggs, maybe a Cadbury Crème Egg, and a Lindt Dark Chocolate Gold Bunny.

I found ways to stay connected to loved ones through social media, emails, and phone calls, blog posts and reminiscences of holidays past. It fed my spirit. Some of the traditions of the past also were compromised by the pandemic. Instead of seeing films in-person in the theater for the cancelled Wisconsin Film Festival the first year, I streamed content and movies online and On Demand. Year two of the pandemic, the festival was virtual only, and last year was a hybrid event.

Easter New Beginnings

Other than my father, I’m the family elder in our immediate family, though I have paternal cousins who are older than me. When our 93-year-old father is no longer with us in life, I will be the eldest. On the maternal side of the family, I am the eldest remining member of my mother’s lineage. What does that mean for how we’ll celebrate the holidays? I’m grateful that some siblings remain close geographically and I’m grateful for social media to keep me in touch with family further away, yet sadly, we will never celebrate holidays as we have in the past.

This year I tried something different for my Easter Dinner, instead of cooking, I ordered a catered Smoked Ham Holiday Dinner and sides from Beef Butter BBQ. I chose a dinner for four so I’d have leftovers to enjoy for a few days. I’ll watch some content today, and I’ve already communicated with family and friends via social media, including viewing my sister Tami’s infamous video eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg inn a single bite, now an addition to my holiday tradition. I connected by phone with my father and my ex-husband. Yesterday, I brunched with members of my pandemic Pod Squad quarantine bubble. Next week, I return to the Wisconsin Film Festival in person. It was a reminder that some things change and some remain the same.

And yes, someone in my family, my niece Casey and her family now living in Italy, colored a Lenzke Family Poop Egg, and I must say perfected it! All is good in the world!

Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!

Poop Eggs & Lamb Cakes

The Orphan Holidays

Dispatch from the Hideout: Easter Home Alone Holiday