Rites of Spring — By Tess Kely

artwork by Daniel Finaldi

A friend’s young daughter spoons a lavender egg from a chipped mug, anoints it with drops of sapphire. She lifts the blue-streaked ovum for me to see, an offering of sorts. Sorrow hangs behind my smile like incense smoke above an altar. The smell of vinegared water carries me to those dyeing days around a scarred oak table. Our kitchen table. A neighbor’s castoff Mom refinished in scraps of time snipped from the crazy quilt of parenthood. Massive claw feet held its base, cigarette burns ghosted its surface. Careful, they're fragile, she reminded us five. We tinted our eggs while she poked hers with a pushpin, a hole in each end. Her warm breath hollowed them. She saved golden yolks and clear albumen for next day’s breakfast then quilled curls of fine bright paper into tiny teardrops and hearts to dress the empty shells. We hung those weightless ornaments on bare willow branches Mom gathered in a clay urn to form a tree. Our Easter tree. I think of her more now that she's gone. The mercy of her death on a sunlit summer morning. The earthy scent of leaves she raked each autumn. Red cardinals at her snow-capped feeder in winter. And in spring I remember those traditions: Mom’s yeasted sweet bread, colorful eggs hidden among daffodils, and chocolate bunnies, whose ears were always sacrificed first.

Tess Kelly's essays have appeared in Passages North, Cleaver, BULL, and River Teeth, among other publications. She lives, writes, and teaches in Portland, Oregon.