White Gloves and Easter Bonnets

My friend Marj posted a Facebook pic on Easter morning of her adorable daughter dressed up in a lovely, pink Easter dress. This sweet little girl was also wearing white gloves, which really took me back. They were a staple growing up. No special occasion church outfit was complete without white gloves and black patent leather Mary Janes worn with lace-trimmed anklets.

One time my parents were out of town and my grandmother had come all the way from New England to stay with us. She didn’t drive so my mom had arranged for some friends to pick us up and take us all the church on Sunday. For Grammy, it would have been unthinkable to miss Sunday Mass. I thought I was all ready for church that morning when my grandmother asked me where my white gloves were. Shrug. I probably hadn’t worn them since the past Easter or Christmas or maybe even as far back as my first Holy Communion. But Grammy insisted. I riffled through my underwear drawer in search of gloves and couldn’t come up with a matching pair. What I found were two mismatched white gloves—both left-handed. And she made me wear them anyway. She probably made me dig out my old chapel veil, too. Time was, if a girl couldn’t find that, she’d have to bobby pin a Kleenex on her head.

My friend’s picture got me thinking about those white gloves and Easter traditions. When we were growing up we always got new clothes for Easter. My brothers would get slacks and oxford-cloth shirts. I’d get a spring dress and maybe a sweater to wear with it, even though frequently we'd have to wear winter coats to church on Easter in Chicago. Some years, my mom made my Easter dress. Once when the boys were little she made them matching, navy-blue Eton suits.

Remember when the church was full of hats on Easter? Back in the day, women’s outfits were always complemented by some modern variation of the Easter bonnet.  I happen to like hats and, as an adult, there have been plenty of Easters when I embraced tradition and incorporated some kind of hat with my Easter finery.  I plopped hats on my daughter’s head the first couple years of her life, too. That’s when she was still fashion compliant. She still wears hats. They just don’t happen to resemble Easter bonnets in any way, shape or form. She's the girl who wore a Mountain Dew ball cap while we shopped for a prom dress at Dillards. 

Hollywood portrayals and a cursory Google search indicate that church hats, or “crowns,” are still the norm in the African-American tradition. In a 1996 New York Times piece called “In Defense of Hats,” Lena Williams wrote: Still, in a world of bandwagon fads and fleeting alliances, the black church remains a bastion of tradition. Many black women of a certain age, this one included, still do not enter a church for Sunday services dressed, as the elders might say, "any ole way." And that means wearing a proper hat.

Royal Ascot  (Credit: The Telegraph)

Apparently the old-fashioned Easter hat is pretty much kaput for the rest of us, at least in the WASPy churches. I didn’t see any on the hordes lined up at the Roman Catholic church across the street on Easter morning either. I bet they’re still the rage in the Church of England though, where it’s common for women to don chapeaus for royal weddings and the races at Royal Ascot.

Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in Easter Parade. 

I could count the hats I saw in church this Easter on one hand. My favorite was a nifty vintage number, from the ‘30s maybe, carried off smartly by a young 30ish woman. When was the last time I wore a hat on Easter Sunday, I wonder? I’m not even certain why I stopped. All I know for sure is I’ve sported a hat more recently than I’ve worn a pair of white gloves. I haven’t abandoned all the habits of my youth though: You can bet I treated myself to a new outfit to wear to church on Easter Sunday.

Okay, I'll join. But please don't ask me to sing Kumbaya any time soon.

I’m challenged.

Not sure what got into me, but I agreed to participate in not just one, but two separate challenges that have the potential to be very good for me.

You should know that I don’t ordinarily go in for these things.

First of all, I’m not much of a joiner. I’ve quit piano lessons, the Girl Scouts and the Junior League. Second of all, I don’t like to set myself up to fail. And by fail, I mean not finish. You see, I don’t always finish things--from diets, to decorating projects, to books I should read but can’t get through. (I know, it’s not good to should all over yourself.) Not finishing may have started back in my junior year of high school when I couldn’t get through Gulliver’s Travels. I also quit going to gym class so I could sit in the library mooning at a senior basketball player who barely knew I existed.

Not me. I wish my hair were that long.

So what am I thinking taking on two challenges, one for three weeks and another for a month? That it will be good for me both personally and professionally to commit to these challenges and claim victory when I complete them.  Aren’t you dying to know what they are?

One is a 30-Day Writing Challenge put forth by the force behind Vicki Abelson’s Women Who Write. As ten of us sat around Vicki’s dining table for a workshop yesterday, she challenged us to write a minimum of five minutes a day for the next 30 days and, as an accountability measure, to post Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 etc., on Facebook.

For some of us, accountability is key to keeping on track—like having a curfew or, if you’re of the 12-step persuasion, a sponsor.  Yesterday I worked on the manuscript for a memoir I’ve been birthing for quite a while; I need to finish it. Satisfied with my effort, I went out on a limb last night and outed myself with a Facebook status update: “Day 1. 30-Day Writing Challenge underway!” We’ll see how long the optimistic exclamation point sticks around…

Not me. I wish I were that thin.

The second challenge is the Oprah & Deepak 21-Day Meditation Challenge for Perfect Health. (Why they didn’t cash in on the rhyme scheme and call it Oprah & Chopra I’ll never understand.) Vicki mentioned she was doing this one, too, which just happened to start yesterday. I had no sooner clicked “Sign Me Up!” on Deepak’s website when I heard from one of my nearest and dearest, a heart friend and spiritual mentor, who texted that she’d just started the same 21-Day Challenge. Serendipity.

On the surface, this one’s easy because each morning you get an email with a link to the daily mediation. Still, the bigger challenge involves actually committing to the 16 minutes a day and, within that 16 minutes, quieting one’s mind to focus on the message and the mantra. Om.

For those of us who have rambunctious families of monkeys and meerkats bounding through our heads, and to-do lists a long as a $200 Whole Foods receipt, this meditation business is no easy task. I have a sense, though, that if I can just stick with it, the payoff will be great. Health. Serenity. Balance. Who doesn’t want that?

Maybe I’m more of a joiner than I thought, because it occurs to me that there's an added bonus to all of this challenge business. Even though both the writing and the meditation are done pretty much in isolation, these challenges provide a built-in sense of community. When you’re committed alongside others toward a common goal, whether it’s to finish writing a screenplay or to keep your anxiety at bay, there is comfort, encouragement and support in knowing you are not alone. Hmmm. That sounds like one of Oprah's "Aha! Moments." I think this challenge thing is working already.