Growing up in a large Catholic/Slovak family, holidays were big and religious holidays were even bigger. Easter meant Church, family and food. Man, was there food.
Every Holy Saturday would find a representative from each Catholic/Slovak family in Church with our Easter baskets full of good food for Easter Sunday. If I recall correctly, we didn't eat meat on Holy Saturday, but Mom cooked up a storm getting everything ready for the blessing on Saturday afternoon. You took your good basket (ours was the industrial size, due to the large family!) and the good linens and doilies. In the basket would be a sampling of all the food you would serve on Easter Sunday. There would be a healthy chunk of ham, sliced up Polish sausage and Italian sausage, a salt shaker, butter in Mom's good cup with the ducks on it, hard boiled eggs, a fresh jar of horse radish (I have NO idea why as I think only my sister Barb ate it), fresh home made Easter bread and a hunk of cetetz.
Ok, that last one is spelled phonetically, not correctly, I think. It's pronounced like see'tetz. I can pronounce it in Slovak but I have no idea how to spell it! But, on Good Friday evening, you take a couple of dozen eggs and put them in your dutch oven and cook over a low flame with sugar and milk until it's a scrambled egg consistency. Then, you put it in a cheese cloth and form a ball while you squeeze the juice out of it. Then, you tie the cheese cloth tight to a wooden spoon, forming a ball with your cetetz, and jamb that wooden spoon into the handle on the cupboard leaving it hanging there over a sauce pan to catch the drippings over night. Hey, for real! This is how it was done! In the morning, you take this ball out of the cheese cloth, put it on a cookie sheet (maybe?) and put it in the oven until the top is lightly browned.
You slice this delicacy in thin slices, like bread and chow down! Some of us liked it with a little salt, some just eat it plain. Being allergic to eggs, this is one thing I'd eat every year and get sick as a dog on it. But man oh man was it worth it!
Anyway, a hunk of cetetz would be in the basket. Whatever was going to make its way to your dinner table had a sampling of it in this basket. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff, but you get the idea.
The Church I grew up in had a couple of services on Holy Saturday for the blessing of the food. Everyone would sit on each side of the big center aisle with all of the baskets placed in the center aisle. The baskets would have their linens and doilies folded back exposing the food. Church never smelled so good! Monsignor would come out, say a few prayers and then walk up and down the aisle with the holy water blessing all of the food. The entire process took maybe 10 minutes. Everyone would close up their baskets and head home.
Once the Holy Saturday evening Mass was over, when you got home, all the food was up for grabs! That's when our Easter Sunday celebrations would start and man, what a feast.
To take the basket to Church was Dad's chore every year. I remember going with him as this was one of the fun "chores" to be done before a family gathering. It beat the heck out of cleaning the house!
I remember when I moved to Houston, I had joined a Church in my neighborhood. I was so excited that for the first time, I would get to present MY basket at Church for the blessing! This felt like such a rite of passage, even though I was over 30 years old! I was searching for just the right basket, as I already had my linens and doilies picked out. Palm Sunday came and there was no mention in the bulletin as to what time the blessing of the food would be the following Saturday! Surely this had to be a mistake!
I called my pastor during the week to ask what time I should be there for the blessing of the food. Ok, my Church was predominately Hispanic and Vietnamese. He had never HEARD of the blessing of the food baskets! Holy crap, what a let down! I immediately called my Mom in a panic! My Church wasn't blessing baskets! It took me that long to find out that was a Slovak tradition, not a Catholic tradition! Who knew?? I was totally crushed. That was a hard tradition to let go of.
Now, I've been away from family and traditions for a long time. I've made my own traditions for some holidays, but to be honest, some holidays are just harder to get through than others.
Mike called me during the day to wish me a Happy Easter. He said what he wouldn't give for a piece of Mom's cetetz. Wow, me too. Then, I talked to Cathie and we talked about that cup with the ducks on it. I don't remember Mom ever using that cup for anything other than putting butter in to be blessed. When I talked to Jim, he talked about how Aunt Mary, the Matriarch of our family now, is up in years and not able to put together the basket any longer for the Easter blessing. This year, her son Marty was taking care of that chore. Wow, another pang. I spent most of yesterday being very homesick.
I guess I can run from traditions but I can't hide. I can't bring back the past but some days it seems that I just need a hug to get through a day. And, not just any hug - I don't care how old you are; some days you just need your Mom.
I miss you, Mom.
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