Every Easter, right up to the age of 19 when I
moved out on my own, my mother would make me a beautiful Easter basket with
only the very finest chocolates and buy me a stuffed animal. The last stuffed animal she bought me was a
5’ tall, bright orange giraffe. I took
that giraffe to every single home I lived in up to the age of 42, where it
would always take up an entire corner of my bedroom – something my boyfriends over
the years must have wondered about and possibly a reason why I’m still
single.
It wasn’t that I was so enamored with the large,
fuzzy beast. It certainly never went
with any of my décor. Truth be told, I
wish she’d chosen something more traditional – and smaller. A simple furry bunny would have been more
than adequate and had some symbolic connection to the holiday. I always wondered what her thinking was
behind such an odd choice or mine in carting it around all those years. I do recall the thought of throwing it away
filled me with guilt. Of course, as a
Catholic, however lapsed, just about anything could fill me with guilt, but
still such a choice would not have been unreasonable as time went by.
I think now that it may have been my mother’s way
of saying “Remember that my love for you is enormous,” as I was about to start
my own life and leave hers. I wonder
what that must have been like for her, living alone for the first time at the age
51, her main purpose – raising me – now over.
She died only three years later.
Each Easter, I still smile at the memory of walking into the living room
that morning so many decades ago and seeing my mother sitting on the couch in
her robe, a cup of coffee in her hand, and an expression of excitement on her
face as she anticipated my reaction to her surprise.
When I finally decided that the giraffe really did
need to move on, I carefully sewed up the torn seams where pet cats had used
its legs as scratching posts, and donated it to a thrift shop that benefited
the local animal shelter where I felt it had the best chance of finding a good
home. It’s been several years now and I’d
like to believe that on another Easter morning, some other child received this
huge expression of their own mother’s love… however odd they may have found it
at the time.
Happy Easter.
