10 Hail Mary’s and a solitary Easter

This year, Easter celebrations at Towerwater was an intimate affair. In the spirit of our isolation, it was also a very homemade experience. No store-bought pickled fish or hot cross buns were to be found on the Towerwater menu.

Although it was only the two of us, we decided to celebrate Easter in true Towerwater style. Table decorations were brighter to fill the empty places with colour. We celebrated absent friends and family by remembering times spent together over so many bygone Easters.

Easter reminds us, in this time of pandemic, that there is always hope for renewal and a new way of moving forward. Even if everything might seem so bleak and uncertain at the present.

We experienced how Easter might have been spent at Towerwater more than a hundred years ago. When so many treats, we now take for granted, were not readily available. Everything had to be made at home.

We learned new skills, enjoyed the fruits of our labour and the abundance of the autumn garden.

For the period of the Stage 5 lockdown, the Dutch Reformed Church rang its bell each midday. Breaking the silence that hangs over the valley. The bellringing adds an old-world charm to the town. One cannot help but stop in what you are doing to be taken up in the rhythmic ringing that vibrates through the silence.

Keith observed that the bell rang for as long as it takes to say 10 Hail Mary’s. Whether it was intentional, we would not know. The bell is rung daily in a time when people cannot attend church services. One of the purposes of the ringing of a church bell is to call people to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

The ringing of the bell to mark the hours and half hours during this period ceased. Instead, the ringing of the bell at midday provided the only punctuation of the day. The solemn ringing at midday became a welcome intrusion. Regardless of whether the intention was to summons us to prayer or to warn of an impending and inevitable danger in a town, mercifully, so far free of the affliction.

Easter Sunday lunch was a quiet affair, with the traditional roast leg of lamb stuffed with quinces and garlic from the garden, enjoyed with a glass of Boplaas Touriga Nacional. The perfect partner for a slow roast leg of lamb stuffed with a fruit that is so reminiscent of Portugal. In the distance the Dutch Reformed Church bell reverberated in the still autumn air urging an increase in faith, hope, and charity in a very uncertain time.