Bugs Bunny and the meaning of Easter

DAVID SILVA

Every Easter morning, at first light, my mother would wake up the

kids and commence the difficult task of getting us ready for church.

This required a lot of time and endless patience, neither of which my

mother ever had.

As long as she loomed over us, threatening and cajoling every step

of the way, we would steadily dress ourselves to the point at which

we could be seen in public. But the moment she turned her back, off

we would run to do something entirely unrelated to the subject of

salvation. She would go into the kitchen to make coffee, and

instantly my brother Michael was in the living room watching

cartoons, his white Sunday shirt half-buttoned and hanging open.

“What are you doing?” I remember her wailing when she walked in on

him.

“Watching Bugs Bunny,” he replied.

“On Easter?” she shouted. “You’re watching Bugs Bunny on the day

our Lord Jesus rose from the dead?”

“I thought Jesus liked bunnies on Easter!”

“Don’t be blasphemous!”

“What’s blasphemous, Mom?” I asked, having been lured into the

room by the siren song of falling anvils and bouncing springs.

My mother stared at the filthy T-shirt and jeans I had thrown on

and shook her head.

“Blasphemous is going to church dressed like that,” she said. “Now

go put on your communion suit!”

“But it doesn’t fit anymore!”

“Do you want to go to hell? Do you want the devil to torment you

for all eternity?”

“Well, no ...”

“Then go change your clothes!”

It was always difficult to argue with Mom on matters pertaining to

religion. My siblings and I fully believed that, as spiritual leader

of the family, Mom held in her hands the keys to both heaven and

hell. This was a belief she actively encouraged, as it helped keep us

in line. At the slightest provocation, she would whip out those keys

and dangle them in front of you -- well, one of them, anyway. Mom was

famous for her threats of eternal damnation, but I can’t recall her

once saying that if we did something right, we were going to heaven.

But the truth was that despite her familial status as a devout and

righteous Catholic, my mother was one of the least spiritual women

I’ve ever known. She was practical-minded, earthy and rooted in the

here and now, and if anyone ever suggested to her that the best way

to deal with a crisis was through prayer, she’d have died laughing.

Religion was good for weddings, funerals and scaring the kids. The

rest of it, she had little use for.

So she smoked and swore and divorced two husbands and accepted

only so much grief from the church fathers before she lost her

temper.

“You know why priests can’t marry, Father Gordon?” I recall her

saying to the family priest when he came by to tell her divorcing my

father was out of the question. “It’s so you can say things like

marriage is a sacred institution. You try being married to this man

for 15 years, then come tell me that with a straight face. “

But such clashes with the clergy were rare. For all her disdain

for the finer points of Catholicism, my mother maintained a healthy

respect for the Almighty. The same sense of practicality that

prompted her to reject the church’s prohibition on divorce also told

her that it was prudent to keep her bases covered. In this way, Mom’s

relationship with God was like that of a woman with a powerful

husband serving an indefinite sentence. For all practical purposes

she was on her own, but stayed faithful because he could show up at

the door at any moment.

So it was that Mom demanded her children observe at least a

modicum of Catholic doctrine for appearance’s sake. She insisted we

go to church on Easter and Ash Wednesday, and encouraged but didn’t

insist we attend Christmas Mass. It was also a given that at least

one Friday every Lenten season, we were made to give up chicken in

favor of tuna salad or a Filet-O’-Fish sandwich. It was a difficult

sacrifice, but we managed.

One Easter Sunday, when I was 8, Mom woke up all of us earlier

than usual, made us hurriedly dress, and walked us down to St.

Matthias. And there, my brothers and sisters and I watched in

astonishment as our mother knelt in the pew and wept and prayed to

God in Spanish and in a manner we had never before seen. She pleaded

and wailed and beseeched and beat at her breast with her clasped

hands.

We watched, mouths open, not sure if we should be alarmed. I

turned to my sister, who leaned over and whispered that it had been a

difficult year for Mom and that she was praying for forgiveness.

Not two months earlier, my mother was riding shotgun in my

sister’s car when two children double-riding on a bicycle suddenly

shot out in front of them and were struck and severely injured. It

had been my mother’s idea to go to the store that day, and she blamed

herself for the accident.

The sight of her in such a state scared me, and I reached up and

pulled at her arm.

“Ma, what’s wrong? What is it?”

My mother stopped praying and looked at me. Then she suddenly

hugged me and leaned back in the pew.

“Do you know why Easter is so important, mijo?” she asked,

clearing her throat and wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

“Because it’s when Jesus rose from the dead,” I said.

My mother shook her head. “It’s because Jesus was God’s only son,

and God sent his only son to die for our sins,” she said. “Do you

know why that’s so important?”

I shook my head. Mom leaned over and held my face in her hands.

“Because I would never do that,” she said with grave seriousness,

then kissed me on my forehead. “Never.”

I didn’t completely understand her, but I understood enough to

smile and lean back in the pew and bask in the knowledge that she

loved me. And over the years, as I thought on her words, I realized

they helped me to understand my mother’s relationship with God more

than anything else ever would.

My mother is a practical-minded woman with little use for dogma or

ritual. But every Easter finds her in her pew, praying to God in his

heaven, because her sense of the appropriate tells her it’s the least

that she can do.

* DAVID SILVA is a Times Community News editor. Reach him at (909)

484-7019, or by e-mail at david.silva@latimes.com.