Easter Sunday 1976 (Happy Easter Dad) Repost for Easter Sunday 2005

Easter Sunday 1976.

I’d awakened early as did my younger brothers Aaron and Marc. We’d been ramped up for Easter for a week already and finally it was time to see what, if anything, the Bunny left for us. Considering how badly things went the year before, our hopes were not very high.

We’d stopped being a churchgoing/Easter dinnering family the year before when I was asked to leave Sunday School (for asking hard to answer questions of the teacher) and my Dad wound up arguing with the Priest about Vietnam. We were later chastised by my Dad’s family for not coming to Easter Dinner dressed in suits and for starting a massive food fight with the three dozen hard boiled and pastel colored eggs mom and us had colored the night before. I ate way too much candy, so did my brothers, and barfed all over the backseat of the family car.

The three of us scoured the inside of the little pink house we rented but there wasn’t a basket to be found; no chocolate rabbits, no jellybeans, no colored eggs. No nothing.

We played paper, scissors, rock to figure out which of us would wake up Mom and Dad and ask why the Easter Bunny had forsaken us. I already knew the answer, but Aaron and Marc were still too young to really grasp the depth of our heresies the year before.

I rigged the game, telling Aaron to throw two rocks in a row (and I knew he’d repeat this strategy in round two… he was five (five year olds are dumb.), knocking Marc out of the game, then I countered with rock, scissors, paper, rock to his rock, rock, rock, rock.

I tugged up my pajamas and headed off to wake Mom and Dad.

The sun was only just creeping over the horizon and though I understood how to tell time I didn’t really understand why 5:30AM was so much earlier than 7AM, our usual wake-up time. I crept beside their bed, on Mom’s side and prodded her back through the blankets.

She rolled over and told me to go back to bed.

I knew Aaron and Marc wouldn’t be happy. I explained that the Easter Bunny hadn’t managed to get inside, and maybe, if she was okay with it, I could take my brothers outside to look for treats in the bushes and grass along the fence in the back yard.

She smiled a little and told me I was a good brother then repeated that we should go back to bed until the big hand was on the twelve and the little hand on the seven, at least, because the Easter Bunny was out late last night and needed more sleep so he wouldn’t be grumpy.

I didn’t really understand, but was reassured enough to take the message to my brothers who joined me in bed to watch the clock and talk about chocolate for another hour and a half.

Would we go to T-Kathy’s again this year? We didn’t make any colored hard-boiled eggs this year so the potential for a food fight was low. Maybe the relatives had forgotten by now and we could go back to the old days (of two years ago) when we chased around her mammoth yard with all of our cousins collecting plastic eggs filled with Matchbox cars and jellybeans while my grandmother, Vavao told dirty jokes in Portuguese about whore houses and curious little boys, and fishermen who could only order “oatmeal” for breakfast.

But, Mom hadn’t fitted us for suits this year, a ritual we dreaded almost as much as wearing the polyester clothes she made based on those measurements, so Easter dinner with the extended family seemed improbable even to a seven year old.

We talked until 7AM then again I crept into our parent’s bedroom. By now they were awake, Mom had already been up and about making instant coffee for Dad who sat at the kitchen table with the newspaper open.

I called out to Aaron and Marc who joined me in the hall before slowly walking into the living room. There, against the white painted plaster, leaned three long fishing poles and three red plastic tackle boxes. The poles were blue fiberglass, about five feet long, with three metal eyelets and brown drop-reels, each with a different colored crank; red for me, blue for Aaron, and White for Marc.

Mom told us to get dressed (I had to help Marc with his socks and shoes) and grab out jackets. Today we’d spend Easter at the Cape Cod Canal breaking in our fishing rods. Dad said he couldn’t imagine cleaning three kids worth of chocolate vomit from his car again and because of that Easter candy was no longer welcome, any that we received would be saved for cooking.

I’d never been fishing before, at least not with my own rod and reel, and while Aaron and Marc may have been disappointed that we didn’t have candy treats, the prospect of spending the day not in polyester, not in church, and not being cajoled by the relatives buoyed their spirits.

Our first stop was for pancakes at IHOP, then a long ride out to Hyannis where we snaked down through the brush to the edge of the canal, a long rocky expanse that fed directly into deep water. Mom and Dad took turns teaching us to bait, cast, and feel for the telltale tug that meant a fish was investigating the sea worms at the end of our lines. Marc and Mom went off to look for crabs after a while leaving Aaron and me and Dad alone to fish.

I can’t remember a time I’d seen Dad happier not only because he loved fishing, but because he was finally spending time with us that didn’t revolve around television or running errands. Better still, he didn’t have to cut the day short to work. He was an offshore lobsterman and spent five night away at a time in a small boat off Point Judith, Rhode Island. He was tired on the rare days when the boat couldn’t put out, and because the work was so hard when there was work, he didn’t have much patience for our antics.

But today Dad was different, he was gentle and encouraging even when we started to whine about being tired or bored or being afraid of the sea worms. His happiness was almost physically tangible and we absorbed it like little sponges. When the tip of Aaron’s pole dipped just a few millimeters we whooped and bounced. Dad steadied the pole as Aaron reeled in the first catch of the day.

We only caught one fish by lunchtime so Dad packed us all up and we headed back toward town, first to the docks in Mattapoisett harbor to catch puffer fish. When you tickle their bellies they gulp air and swell up like little baseballs, but you can’t eat them.

An hour after that we stood as a family on the Padnarum Bridge and reeled in dozens of feisty silver Scup and the occasional bewildered Snapper Blue. We kept our catch in a white five-gallon bucket and by five o’clock we had enough fish to feed us, and our neighbors.

Dad taught us to clean the fish for cooking by first scraping away the dime-sized silver scales, removing the head, innards, and tail. We rubbed them in corn meal seasoned with black pepper and parsley and watched as Dad dropped them into a bubbling pot of vegetable oil. Mom boiled red potatoes and made a salad.

We ate more that evening than I can even describe, almost every Scup we’d cooked was gone, all of the potatoes, the entire salad, a loaf of Portuguese bread, and later Dad’s signature bread pudding made from Wonder Bread and canned fruit cocktail.

Dad let me dry the dishes that he washed and later he taught us how to clean the linoleum floor with wet towels (one soapy, one just wet) and a bucket of hot water. Later, while Marc slept on the floor near the TV and Aaron colored pictures with crayons, Dad and I stowed the fishing poles and tackle boxes in the garage.

We all went to bed early, full, and happy.

When I think of Easter now and of my son Ian and my Dad and how, in a perfect world, I could bring us together at the Cape Cod Canal following a breakfast of pancakes. But we have different responsibilities now. Dad is working, still, at 65, at my brother Aaron’s seafood restaurant, helping Marc clean giant Striped Bass for the afternoon special.



I have to oblige my wife’s family and their desire for turkey and the pleasure of our company. And, to be honest, it’s usually a nice and relaxing day.

Still, I smell the pungent air of fried fish and hear the gentle lapping of salt water in my dreams. Ian isn’t old enough to fish, not yet. But I still have my original Easter pole and reel stowed carefully in Mom’s basement. This summer I’ll clean it and oil it and get it all ready because next year I am making Easter ours again.

Hope you don't mind, I shared it via link to my best pals.

Thank you so much for sharing this. I have tears in my eyes thinking back to similar Easters and celebrating now the first one that my children are grown and gone. Enjoy today and I will look forward to hearing about your first fishing trip with Ian. Happy Easter.

just had my hubby read it, spent most of his holidays and summers on the Catpe. :hug: to you and yours.