The Easter Basket

I purposely missed church on Easter Sunday. On a day when the pews are packed, I needed solitude. Stillness. Quiet. Most of the day Friday, my mind was occupied with the sacrifice made by The One who created me. The suffering. The willingness to endure unimaginable agony. The purpose.

Jesus didn’t waste the time He’d been given.

He didn’t doom scroll.

He didn’t divide.

He loved.

I’ve been working harder to effectively use the time I’ve been given, understanding now, as I listen to sand collect at the bottom of my personal hourglass. For the past month I’ve set aside time on Tuesday just for me.

I’m learning how to make baskets.

You may think, what a trivial thing, the making of baskets. People have much loftier goals. For me, I have wanted to make baskets for at least twenty-five years. There weren’t many people making baskets in Atlanta; not that I could find during my time there. Since moving back home to Appalachia, finding a class hasn’t been easy, which is why I all but knocked people out of my way, after seeing an announcement for a class to be held in a library within my district.

Libraries. Cornerstones of the communities. If you are against libraries, you are against me. But I digress.

This isn’t a convenient class. I drive an hour and ten minutes through a winding gorge and have found myself stuck behind dump trucks, tractor trailers, and this summer, I’ll travel at a snail’s pace behind busses carrying white water rafters. None of these inconveniences will sway my decision to learn.

The class is taught by two retired ladies with a passion for weaving. It’s a small class, five at the most, although there is room for one more. We each pay for supplies, the library provides a room with a view of a pair of nesting eagles who’ve taken up residence near the local fish hatchery. Again, libraries. Of course there would be a pair of nesting eagles outside the window.

I fell in love with my first basket, having agreed to give a dyed-weaver a try. I knew the ladies were getting rid of inventory they no longer wanted, a variegated reed, with hues of green, brown and red. The colors made my basket pop. As I finished the basket, something much stronger than pride took hold, I saw the realization of a simple dream. For you see, the bottom forty of my field is thick with honeysuckle.

Earlier this year, I harvested a few vines and believed I could teach myself to replicate a basket I purchased in 1986 when I worked for Swain County back when Native American ladies visited once a month with trash bags full of baskets to sell. I couldn’t afford the expensive ones, but I did purchase a teeny-tiny one for twenty dollars. It has been worth every penny.

The tiny basket I purchased in the 80s.

I measured the basket, laid out scraps of reeds and got to work weaving tiny pieces of honeysuckle I’d dyed with bloodroot to give it a yellow color. I would quickly learn colors change when a basket dries. The instructors haven’t taught me how to secure a handle, but I’m an intelligent woman, and there’s YouTube. Right?

I tried not to think about Easter at my grandparent’s house with spiral ham, potato salad, and tea so sweet your teeth ached with the drinking. There was coconut cake. Always, coconut cake and sometimes a pound cake too. We dyed real eggs, no prize eggs for us. Oh to return to those days when everyone I love was still alive. This year, we didn’t have ham, or potato salad. I didn’t even drink a sweet tea today. There are no laughing children in the family now. No dyed grass or pink eggs.

But the resurrection and Hope. Well, we still have that.

You will notice there is no handle on my tiny little Easter basket. It kept sliding out. By the time I finished, my hands hurt, my neck hurt, and was tired after hours of pulling, pushing, and squishing. I need a Tylenol and a nap

My tiny honeysuckle basket. It doesn’t sit flat, but I still love it.

Most of all, I needed a slice of coconut cake from years gone by.