Mamaw's Yard pt. 1

 My family owns its own Santa suit. In some ways that tells you everything you need to know about us but another of our more brief holiday traditions may help create a better-rounded picture of us.

My grandmother’s house, where all holidays were celebrated, sat in a cozy little neighborhood in our small southwestern Virginia town and her front yard was home to many a game of kickball and freeze tag. Whatever image you’re conjuring up of her yard, it was smaller than that. Long, skinny and sloped. Also if you kicked the ball too hard it’d go rolling down route 83 never to be seen again.

We went through about a ten-year period where my cousins and I had all aged out of wanting to hide and hunt eggs on Easter. Our mothers still insisted we color eggs so come the day of resurrection we were left with three to four dozen multicolored eggs sitting in the refrigerator with no real intention of doing anything with them.

Boredom was not a word any of us were allowed to use and that made us resourceful. Hence the scene that lay before me that Sunday. Before I could comprehend how it had come about a gutsy cousin was on the pitcher’s mound i.e. middle of the front yard (again whatever you’re imaging it’s too big) tossing eggs underhand toward my brother who waited at the opposite end of the yard with a bat. When the egg made contact with the foam t-ball bat the pitcher’s reaction time was key to shield their eyes and mouth from the egg debris.

This went on for some time considering the number of eggs we’d been forced to color. The pitcher was exchanged every time someone needed to go remove the boiled egg and purple shell from their hair. Each of us had our turn at bat leaving a carpet of boiled egg all over the front yard.  

Video cameras rolled while we laughed our asses off at each other and soon Mamaw emerged from her perch on the couch inside to stick her head out of the door and take in the scene. Mamaw, never one to mince words, waited until she had everyone’s attention so she could demand “Who’s gonna clean this shit up?”

Today we have lots of babies to hunt Easter eggs so some of our traditions have returned to the more conventional. My husband still dresses in that red suit with pillows stuffed in his pants every Christmas Eve speaking in an unidentifiable accent (Jamacain?) but our batting eggs tradition died with Mamaw. There was an unspoken understanding that there would be no way to top that opening game with her most sincere reaction. I keep a pack of Marlboro Lights in my sock drawer to light up when moments like those get foggier than I would like. I take a long draw and close my eyes hoping to hear a bit of her sass and relive those moments on Beech Street.