Jelly beans in the 1970s were sturdy and dry, their rainbow colors missing blue and disappointingly studded with somber white and black.
They came only in these classic springtime flavors: Liquid Tylenol, Bar of Soap, Stinging Nettle, Paraffin, Smelly Marker, Vegetable Oil, and Ethylated Herb.
Early Easters
Easter was like those original jelly beans for me growing up: A rare novelty sprinkled with unpleasant tensions. 1) Find a basket of candy, 2) go to church (or maybe not), 3) ham and potatoes and a whiskey for my grandfather.
My mother would disappear for cigarettes hoping that Grandpa, also smoking, wouldn’t guess that we hadn’t been to church since Christmas.
My mother was all bell bottoms and no Easter bonnet, disco dancing instead of daily devotionals.
The few times we did attend Mass, I felt ashamed because I did not look Irish like Mommy, and I had no daddy.
She explained to me that she didn’t like Church, or dinner with her parents, because she didn’t like getting yelled at about going to Hell.
Who does?
Yet, I was frustratingly, secretly, afraid of Hell.
Since my mother thought that was ridiculous (“You’re as bad as Grandpa!”), I immediately found other things to be afraid of: Tooth decay, gas station lines, harp seal hunters, emphysema, and a scary rabbit on TV named “Irontail” who did not know the true meaning of Easter.
If the devil was pretend, then maybe God was, too.
The Easter Bunny seemed imaginary and so did my father.
I watched TV anchors report that the real world around me was rotting and I dreamt Irontail invaded my elementary school.
Hope of an Easter morning
I wished to avoid repeating the churchless Easters of my past.
Deliberately, without Hell-yelling or smoking, I have been slowly learning about Catholicism, trying to practice it, awkwardly but with steady determination.
I began attending Mass, gradually, because it took a few years to scrape away old peeling layers of my ignorance and timidity.
I joined a Bible study, asked a friend to show me how to go to Confession, and stopped reading award-winning, boundary-pushing, nightmare-inducing novels.
Through a Catholic lens, the lights went on and I could see a dazzling spectrum of topics to study and ways to pray, all united by one singular but infinite master plot with a powerful and protective ever-protagonist.
Every Ash Wednesday, I now trade both bad dreams and jelly beans for a thumb-smeared smudge of ashes.
Finally, I can hope for an Easter morning where marshmallow chicks and the birds of the air meet through an open window, where grocery store tulips stand tall next to the lilies of the field.
On Easter Sundays, churchgoers might see people who don’t normally venture into any house of God.
I was that stranger, foreign and out of place at Mass, waiting to get back to hunting for any stray jelly beans that fell straight to the bottom of my basket through shredded green cellophane grass.
Jelly Belly, the company, later took me by surprise by vastly improving the jelly bean in every competitive category: Texture, taste, and packaging.
It was like when Dorothy lands in Oz: Suddenly jelly beans were tiny and delectable, vividly colored, and intensely flavored.
Jesus, the blue-ribbon confectioner, also took me by surprise by developing a not-secret formula splendid with contrasts — fun with sanity, freedom with stability, a Father with a Son.
Mariko Patterson is a member of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Madison.