The Sunday morning ritual had begun. Saturday night sleep came to an abrupt end when a young child gave voice to his discomfort, demanding attention. Everybody up! Dry diapers! Don’t be too slow with breakfast! We were off to a running start for the day. With the noisy baby quieted we could proceed with our own breakfast and other duties. Of course the process was far simpler when there was only one baby to attend to. By the time there were three it was a bit more difficult. Most of the burden fell to their mother Mary, of course. The kitchen became the bathroom. After the breakfast dishes were washed and put away, the kitchen table became a dressing table. With towels on the table and clothes in place nearby, we started making the babies ready for the trip to church. It was a sight to behold.

Having drawn warm water into the kitchen sink, Mary stripped David of his nightclothes and lifted him into the sink for the first bath. When she was finished with him she put him on the table where I dried him with a towel and helped him get dressed. Meanwhile, she had changed the water and put Stephen into the sink for bath number two and passed him on to me to dry etc. while she bathed Catherine. Somehow we managed to get everybody cleaned up and ready to go most Sundays. By the time we got Susanna we had moved to our new house and Mary changed the Sunday morning rat race. I don’t remember how but it worked.

In my early days as a family man, Easter became a very special Sunday for reasons in addition to the annual celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. By the time our firstborn was a year old we had joined Market Street Presbyterian Church and decided that it was time to have him baptized. I don’t know how we came up with the date for the event but it turned out to be Easter, so on that day we presented him for baptism. Before the end of the year our second son was born and we had another candidate for baptism. We chose the next Easter as an appropriate date and Pastor Art Romig agreed. I believe pastors really enjoy baptizing babies. They are prone to carry the child down the aisle of the church to show him off to the congregation.

Before another year passed we were blessed by the birth of our first daughter. Easter came and Pastor Romig repeated the sacrament of baptism. I thought I sensed a murmur from the pews, “The Jessees again” but we were not done. We came back for the fourth consecutive Easter with our second daughter for baptism. This time I was sure I heard a murmur, “When are they going to stop.” Well, we did stop; that was the end of the line. We decided to keep them all.

As time went by, somebody (probably their mother) started spreading stories about a crazy rabbit that went around laying eggs on the eve of Easter. They called him the Easter Bunny. This was news to me for I’d never heard of such an absurd thing. I had been on Easter egg hunts when I was a child but I found only dyed hen eggs. They certainly did not come from rabbits; I knew that things rabbits left behind were much smaller than hen eggs. Nevertheless I went along with the myth. Kids seemed to enjoy being fooled.

When all the children were in school, but yet little, Mary made Easter outfits for all of them. She made jackets for the boys and matching dresses for the girls. Wow! Did they look snazzy that Easter! Mary had even made matching full-length coats and tam-o’-shanters for the dollies! Mothers seldom take the time and energy to do things like that these days. I have only one regret concerning those Easters and the years in between; they all passed much too quickly.