Cascarones are bright-colored eggshells, with confetti tissue-paper-sealed into them. The eggs are emptied through a small hole and then washed and dyed. Growing up, we would start saving the shells in February to have enough for Easter Sunday, when we would run around our backyard and smash them over each other's heads.
This is a bright memory for me, clear as day. The carton of empty eggshells on the windowsill of the kitchen. The strong light of a Texan sky, confetti all over the ground. My siblings and I laughing in glee, the laughter sounding like little late-delayed reflections of each other.
Normally I make at least one cascarón, but these last few weeks have been so heavy, I've become an anechoic chamber. All silence.
These things have required some lifting:
Kozo's death, and his memorial. / Steph's re-incarceration. / The reviving of Dave's website. / The completion of projects I had promised to participate in. / My new class which, while wonderful, also covers very difficult topics. / Donny's travel which is both a blessing because it means continued employment in an industry he loves, and a sadness because he cannot be here as I flail, and a fear, and a fear, and always a fear. / Difficulties with my ID that would require a book, not a blog, to discuss in all its traumatic details. / My perhaps-not-so-strangely triggered response to articles about how a year and a half of isolation has set us back decades as a country and individuals.
We would pick eggshells out of everything for ages, it seemed. Perhaps it was only days. My long hair, twisted back in a braid would be pulled undone in the shower and the shells would hail down on the floor. The clatter like glass, but also like laughter, like all of our echoes got stuck in the shells, too.
We always made our own confetti from scrap paper and magazines. We would cut the tissue paper in small round shapes and glue them to the shells with a paste made of flour and water.
I still do this, when I make my own, even though I have all variety of glue that I am certainly old enough to use by myself. Last year, I used a leaf as confetti and I rained autumn down on my own hair.
The shell was dyed in turmeric, almost lucent.
When I smashed my moonbright egg, it toppled to the hardwood of my tiny apartment and I could hear it again. The clatter like glass, but like laughter, but like echo, but like my siblings, but like Texan sky, but like Mamasaur's kitchen windowsill where we planned our celebration out months in advance.
This year, it's all quiet, and on years like this, when the sound chain is broken, I always wonder if this is where a tradition ends for me. If this is where the echo stops-
or if it just needs a break.
A little Easter nap, mayhaps.
