One of my older sisters had married an Italian man who said that he’d never had an Easter egg hunt, so we decided to have one. We all went to the city park in the town where I lived, siblings, an aunt, anybody who thought they might enjoy it. Normal family gatherings. The park is next to Cibolo creek with cypress trees along the water, and fields of mowed grass. The city mowed the grass, but left nature more or less as it was closer to the creek, so it grew more freely.
I am the seventh of eight kids; my sister, Lottie, my brother, Cliff, and I would spend hours at this creek. (Not the sister married to the Italian.) We’d walk along the side of the water where it was cooler. We’d swim or fish or just explore. Once, when we were swimming, we saw a snake’s head come up out of the water. But it was okay, because he ducked back down under the water again, so we continued to swim and play. Turtles lived there, spiders had webs along the side, fish swam. When we were in the water we’d frequently feel something brushing against our legs. It was a great place.
I remember the way the park smelled. The water has the pungent smell of moss and still water. The fields, for some reason, had wild onions growing in it, so when they mowed you could smell the onion mixed with the mown grass.
This was the park where my mother decided to have the Easter egg hunt for her new son-in-law. I was around 13 years old, and it never occurred to me that I might be too old for such shenanigans. My grasp of society in general and its norms was tenuous at best, and I didn’t really know why adults having an Easter egg hunt was a novel thing. But that blended into everything else my 13-year-old mind didn’t understand. We had a picnic lunch at one of the covered tables—typical sandwich stuff and sodas. I’m sure somebody brought a white cake, because there was always that white cake at these park parties. Finally, we all busied ourselves while Mom went to the creekside and hid the eggs.
Cibolo Creek in Boerne Texas
It was a nice family event. The eggs were hidden in the tall grass by the water, behind vines that grow up the trees, in the crooks of the cypress roots that were above the ground. And other interesting places. My brother-in-law got to experience an Easter egg hunt, complete with a decorated basket. He got to experience Lottie, Cliff and I acting like the feral kids we were, untamed and unfamiliar with how to behave around new people. (Our older brothers and sisters knew us well enough, though, so it was fine.) I remember Lottie and my older brother Doug rolling around in the grass and other plants, fighting over an egg. I remember this for a reason.
Lottie, Cliff, and I hadn’t been in Central Texas long. This lush green park with trees and plants was foreign to us. The three of us had spent most of our lives in the Panhandle of Texas, a far cry from trees and greenery. It’s no wonder we fell in love with it. The older siblings had moved on with their lives, in the San Antonio area, for a while so they were more familiar with the climate and geography.
We knew the trees were cypress trees because our father told us. (He could have been wrong, for all I know.) Most of the other stuff were just ‘plants’. Grass, vines, bushes, weeds. We weren’t concerned so much about their names. We learned, though, that plant identification would be a good thing to learn.
Poison ivy affects some people more than others. My younger brother, Cliff, for instance, was more or less unaffected. Lottie and I, though, were physically transformed. Every part of skin was covered in rash—most of it oozing a yellowish substance that grew crusty. Our eyes swelled shut, so we couldn’t go to school. Everything itched all the time, with no relief. I don’t know who thought that Calamine Lotion was good for anything, but mostly it just added an extra texture to the crust that already covered us.
We heard that others in the family had rashes as well, though I don’t know how badly they were affected. Those vines that the eggs were behind? They had the three leaves that we would very soon recognize as poison ivy. The plants Lottie and Doug rolled around in, laughing and fighting over an egg? Poison ivy.
Lest anybody think that I’m trying to bash my Mom, please know that she was an excellent mother and planned the outing beautifully. Everybody had a good time. The park was a wide open space, green and inviting. It was a nice sunny day, and we came together as a family to share this American tradition with a new member. Mom was one of the people who were not affected by the poison ivy, so she’d apparently never had the need to learn what it looked like. Raising eight children was enough; she didn’t need another career in plant taxonomy.
But I know now. And I have a healthy respect for unidentified flora and fauna. I hope you are careful this weekend and enjoy time with your friends and family. Don’t play with vines you don’t know.