I always looked forward to the first Sunday in May – our Decoration Day (the set day each year when people memorialized their deceased relatives by placing flowers on the graves)  at New Macedonia – when I was a child.  The appeal wasn’t the walking around in the cemetery and putting flowers on our relatives’ graves nor was it the slobbery kisses from relatives and family friends that we saw only once a year.  Neither was it hearing how much I had grown nor how much bigger I was than my older sister.  What really held appeal was showing off my new outfit, running and romping with other kids and filling my plate with delicious food spread under the old oaks. 

            Mother made me two new dresses each spring and bought new shoes and matching accessories – one ensemble for Easter and another for Decoration Day.  The dresses were usually made of some light-weight fabric and were either sleeveless or short-sleeved so they would carry over to summer.  Inevitably, a cold snap would hit that Sunday; the adults called it blackberry winter.  That brought on a major conflict.  Mother would insist I wear my winter coat over my new pretty dress, and I would insist I wasn’t even cold (a major fib.) Even if she won, I would manage to get the coat off after a while so everyone could admire my new frock.  Usually this happened when we went inside the church for the singing.  Four-part harmony echoed throughout that old wooden church.  We sang peppy, fast songs to the top of our voices.  We kids would sometimes make up new words for the songs.  When we sang “Where could I go,” and came to the line “needing in a friend to save me in the end,” we would sing “needing a friend to kick me in the end.” We were quite creative on other songs, too.

            I’ll have to admit, Decoration Day isn’t nearly as much fun as an adult, although I still go out of respect for my parents, and  I still don a new outfit on that day.  The first time I attended after my mother had died, I came in church a bit late because I had taught my Sunday school class at another church before I came.  I walked down the aisle in my fitted, new blue silk dress confident that I looked nice enough for the occasion.  When I sat down by my dad, who was very hard of hearing at that time and seemed to think everyone else was, he loudly proclaimed, “Babs, that dress is about too tight for you, isn’t it?” Many giggles revealed his comment had not gone unnoticed. Perhaps I should have desired the clothes of righteousness more.

           
Isaiah 61:10  says, I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness ---.