“An Easter programme set out on the side-table — kept for the woman who has hosted every Easter lunch for forty-three years.”
11 wishes, kept · in the order they were brought to the table.
Vivian, my dear — twenty-one Easters I have watched you arrive at the eight-o'clock service, sit in the third pew, and stay quietly behind to put the hymnbooks back where they belong. The church is gentler for you. Christ is risen — and the kettle, knowing you, will be on by the time you read this. With love, C.
Mum — forty-three years of Easter lunches, and you have never, once, let anyone help you set the table. This year we did it while you weren't looking. The lamb is in. The peas are shelled. The narcissi from the back garden are in the green jug. Sit down. Read this. Then come and eat.
Granny — the Easter you taught me, age six, how to hold the prayer book the right way up is, I now realise, the only religious instruction I have ever fully retained. It has served me well. I am bringing the eldest of mine to lunch today, with a small posy of daffodils she picked herself. Be gentle about the arrangement. She is very proud.
Great-Grandma Viv — I picked the YELLOW flowers for you because YELLOW is the EASTER colour. Daddy says I have to be quiet at the table but I AM telling you HAPPY EASTER very loudly in this card. I love you SO MUCH.
Vivian — I have been your daughter-in-law for thirty-one Easters, and the thing I always remember is that you set out a small plate at the end of the table for whoever turns up unannounced. Someone always does. The seat has never once gone unused. The Whitfield Easter has always had room. Thank you, for thirty-one years of room.
Mum. The peony you put in by the back gate the spring after Dad died is doing the best it ever has. I cut three stems for the dining table this morning. They are open already. You taught me — and I have said this every Easter for twenty years — that the season comes whether you are ready for it or not. We are, this Easter, more ready than I would have thought possible. Thank you, Mum.
Viv — from the old Wendover choir. We are at our daughter's in Galway this Easter, but we are raising a glass at three. We can hear, from this far, what your kitchen sounds like at one in the afternoon on Easter Sunday. We can also smell the lamb. With love and lilies — P & A.
Mrs Whitfield — from two doors down. You have brought us hot cross buns every Easter for nine years, including, we should now confess, the Easter we were not even Christian. We loved you for it then and we love you for it now. The bowl of saffron rice we are bringing over at six is, very loosely, our return. Eid Mubarak in advance, also — your calendar is, frankly, generous.
Viv — fifty-four years I have been coming to your Easter table, and I have, by my count, never once been allowed to bring more than wine and conversation. You have, somehow, made me feel useful both times. May this Easter be quiet, slow, and full of the small grandchildren you set up to fail at the egg hunt every year. With love, as ever, Tomás.
Granny V — the cardigan you gave me for Christmas has been on every single day since. I am wearing it now on the train from London. I will be at the door by twelve. Save me the chair next to yours; I have a small confession about a boyfriend I would rather make under your hat than my mother's. (Tell her nothing. I will.) Love you, F.
Viv — forty-five Easter Mondays of you and me in your garden the day after, pretending to deadhead but mostly drinking the leftover wine. I will be at the back gate at three on Monday with the secateurs and a small but pointed bottle. Plant the peony anyway. She'll find it. Yours, M.
To the family, the parish, and the people who have, between them, drifted in and out of this kitchen since 1983 —
Granny — Mum — Vivian — has not been told about this page. She would, characteristically, have said it was far too much fuss, and then she would have read every word twice, with her glasses on the end of her nose, and put the kettle on without being asked.
Forty-three Easter lunches. The same long table, brought down from the attic on Maundy Thursday; the same green jug of narcissi from the back gate; the same lamb, slow-cooked from the night before because she does not believe in being rushed on a Sunday. The same chair at the head of the table, into which she has never once let anyone else sit. (We have tried. Don't.)
If you are at lunch today, leave your phone in the hall. If you are reading this from elsewhere — Galway, Lagos, Lisbon, Wendover Garden Club — she will read your words this afternoon, between the lamb and the pudding, in the chair by the back window. The tea will be on. The peony she planted the spring after Dad died is doing the best it ever has.
With love, and with the quiet thanks of three generations — The Whitfield family
Spring is the season of resurrection, and of grandmothers who set the table early.
Share this wall