Easter eggs Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Back to Basics

I revel in having daughters (in-law, technically, but I prefer to drop the hyphenated part) who pay attention to how their choices impact the Earth and care about what they put into their bodies. Sharing fundamental values like those makes life not only so much easier but also much richer and more fun. For instance, Tiffany’s decision to get ‘back to basics’ this year vis-à-vis the hallowed tradition of dying Easter eggs.

To hear her tell it, Tiffany read the packaging of a traditional egg coloring kit and was unhappy with the various dyes being used. Never one to be daunted by a little bit of inconvenience for a cause, she harvested the leavings of the veggies from her local farm co-op, Tinicum CSA, which she’d squirreled away in her freezer. Beet tops and yellow onion skins. Spinach, red onion skins, and blueberries. (She knew she’d saved them for a reason!)She even threw in some lavender to try to jazz up the wan coloring of the spinach.

Yes, I got the chance this weekend to dye eggs the old fashioned way. Tiffany slaved away in the kitchen all day boiling, boiling, and boiling again. Going back yet again and reducing the liquid containing the natural colors leeching out of the vegetables and fruits, making it ever more potent.

I was quite surprised by the depth of color yielded by ‘going old school’ and creating natural dyes for the eggs. I think the fan favorite this year, at least, was the rich purple-y blue created by the blueberries.

My photos don’t do these justice – Photo: L. Weikel

I Dropped the Ball

I’ll admit it. Between us, we only had a handful of eggs on the white-ish spectrum. That was poor planning on my part. The vast majority of ova we had available to dye were shades of brown. Eggs that are already naturally more than a tabula rasa make it tough on any dye to assert its full-throated essence on its surface. But the task is especially difficult for naturally created dyes to imprint their unique expression of rainbow energy on brown eggs.

Nevertheless, we persisted.

Luckily, we were able to get an idea of some of the more unique and perhaps more reticent colors by carefully curating which eggs should go in which cups. I regret not taking photos of the coffee cups and bowls filled with these natural elixirs. Some of the colors created were startlingly different than one might expect from its appearance in the cup.

The spinach-lavender concoction teamed up to create a uniquely colored liquid that, when just sitting in the bowl, was murky and slightly pinkish and reminiscent of, well, throw up. But when a nearly white egg soaked in the infusion for a bit, the egg was imbued with a moss green color that made the it resemble a mottled river stone. Lovely!

So this Easter’s shout out goes to my daughter* Tiffany. Thank you for spending all the time it took to lovingly create these healthy, fascinating, back-to-basics natural dyes – and then sharing them (Covid-safely, I might add) with us.

(T-236)

Karl’s egg 19 April 2014 – Photo: L. Weikel

Best Easter Egg EVER

I’ve always loved Easter.

The memories I have of Easters growing up are not whizz bang affairs. In fact, it’s funny – when I think back, as I sit here, trying to decide what memories I might share that could convey why my heart always seems to lift when I think about Easter, I realize how magical my thinking was…even back then. It wasn’t necessarily the literal stuff of Easter that I loved, it was what lived in my imagination.

I loved hunting for Easter eggs. Oh my goodness. Not the public hunts, put on by schools or churches. The hunts I cherish are the ones that took place in the living room of the farmhouse I grew up in.

My brother Henry is 16 years older than I. My mother would let him go out to see his girlfriend (and eventual wife), Diane, on the night before Easter only if he promised to come home and ‘help the Easter Bunny’ hide the hard boiled eggs I’d dyed that night.

The Hunt for the Eggs

I swear that was the best part about Easter. Finding the eggs that The Rabbit hid (as she came to be known in our household – Karl’s and mine – as our guys were growing up) was a challenge that had the potential to occupy me the whole day. Inevitably, there would be one or two eggs that were so well hidden that it would literally take me hours to find them. Sometimes my brother (if he could remember) would have to play that game of “warmer” to help me.

Truth be told, I think he probably had no recollection of where he’d hidden them and was only sending me on a wild goose chase anyway. At least a couple eggs over the years weren’t discovered until months (or perhaps years) later. They were completely desiccated by the time they were accidentally found, so who knows how long they’d excitedly waited to fulfill the dream of all true Easter eggs, of being reunited with their colorful siblings, only to wither away, forgotten and alone? Yeah. Sad.

The magical thinking that really made Easter special for me, though, is the image I’ve always carried in my head of the true Easter Rabbit. For the life of me, I don’t know why the thought of this creature didn’t scare me, especially since I cannot stand people in costumes or masks. I think it may be because I had such a sense that “she” was in fact a real Rabbit – just larger than normal – not a person dressed up as a bunny. But…wow.

The Reason for My Connection to ‘The Rabbit’

You’ll never believe it, but I just realized that on some level, my sense of and connection to the Easter Bunny was a precursor to the literal experiences with power animals that I would start having some 25 years later. (I’ve honestly never thought about it in this context before this moment. Wow.)

Another reason Easter is a favorite holiday is because I was born on Easter Sunday. So periodically, over the years, my birthday would again fall on Easter. But it always felt special, somehow, that I’d managed to arrive on that day (even if the day was nearly literally over by the time I arrived).

And I’ve always been partial to all the other babies (bunnies, chicks, lambs, pansies, robins, ducklings, piglets, daffodils) that abound in the springtime (hence, Easter-time), too. Indeed, even at church (raised Catholic), the concepts of death, rebirth and ascension appealed to me.

Anyway, it’s always felt like Easter was ‘my’ day – no matter when it fell on the calendar.

The Tradition – and Magic – Continued

Growing up, my kids knew my delight in Easter, and hopefully shared it, too. I’d even commandeered my eldest son, Karl, to help ‘The Rabbit’ hide the eggs for his younger brothers a couple of years, just like my mom had recruited my brother.

So imagine this: On April 19, 2014, my two adult sons (and Tiffany – who was meeting us for the first time!) were indulging me by coloring eggs on ‘Easter eve.’ I’d placed a pristine white egg in a cup of boiling water with red and blue food coloring and a dash of white vinegar (purple being my favorite color) and just let it sit. I wanted to see just how deep a hue of purple I could make this egg.

After it sat in the dye for quite a while, I dipped my tablespoon into the cup and raised it to the surface. The egg was covered with random bubbles, but it looked like it had ripened to a really deep and satisfying purple. I placed it carefully in the cardboard egg carton with all the rest.

We Could Feel His Presence

Mind you, this was two and a half years after Karl had died. He was, as he still is, thought about and talked about frequently. But we were especially reminiscing about prior Easters with him as we introduced Tiffany to our traditions. We could feel not only how much we missed Karl but how much Karl was missing us.

Imagine, then, our goosebumps and stunned expressions when I picked up my purple egg and looked at it carefully. Not only was his name clearly written on the egg, but it also looked like it was written on a background of stars. And even more amazing, the letters of his name actually look like his style of printing. Random bubbles?

As we’re fond of saying: YCMTSU.

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Springtime, Happy Rebirth and Renewal.

Believe.

(T-951)

P.S.: We love you, Karl. And again, a hearty well done on that manifestation!