Easter Carolers

The Easter Carolers will be around for most of the four-day Easter weekend. These are men and women in local dress, black pants or skirts and vests, red sashes around their waists, and Grumpy-like red dwarf hats. They will sing native songs. In other years I’ve seen them distribute beignets from baskets carried by a donkey with yellow and red Catalan ribbons braided into his tail. They offer Muscat drunk from a pitcher with a spout as long as the pitcher that they pour into open mouths without lips touching the glass. Some years they give out eggs. Some years they just sing. Each time I see them, brings up good memories.

The first time I saw them my daughter and my mom had come for the week. My Dad had died a few months before and it was my mom’s first trip to Europe. At that time I shared ownership of a house around the corner from my current studio. The house was three stories, had the original fireplace in the kitchen which in the 1600s was how the owners cooked all the meals. The kitchen was so French that one would expect Gerard Depardieu to be drinking un verre at the table where baguettes and olives would be next to the dish of anchovies soaking in a bowl. Strings of onions and garlic would hang from the beams.

We arrived to an empty house. It was cold. The water had been shut off. My neighbor, Monsieur Dombis, drove me to the water company and translated. By the time the water was back on, my Mom had a cold.

I led her to the medical center. She told me she had never been to a doctor she couldn’t speak to. Neither could I, but we emerged with prescriptions. At the pharmacy I wanted to make sure she had something for her cough and Kleenex. I grabbed my throat and coughed. I acted out blowing my nose. “Oh, you want cough medicine and tissues,” the pharmacist smiled. “I speak English very well.”

We went to Easter Day Mass and watched as statues of the Virgin and Christ were carried around the 700-year old church in what seemed much like a dance.

We didn’t go to the Sanch in Perpignan because she didn't feel up to it, although I have been since. The Sanch is a religious procession with its origins in the Middle Ages, where each church carries its flower-draped statues. Penitents follow the statues, some of who are barefoot. Many are dressed in what looks like Ku Klux Klan sheets died red. The resemblance to the KKK makes me uncomfortable. I prefer the singers.

That first Easter the Carolers came around and we watched them sing. That Easter I learned much more about my mom, my Dad’s second wife -- that she had served in the Navy in WWII, how she felt on topics we had never discussed. I learned that under less than comfortable conditions she was a great sport. I learned that she was willing to try things that seemed strange even if it were tentatively.

Thus each time I look at the Easter Carolers the memories will include those of a woman living in Florida, far away from these Catalan singers. Both make me smile.