was over, and it was a day to celebrate the Resurrection. After Mass, we would come home and telephone all of our relatives across the country to wish them a happy Easter. Instead of saying, "Happy Easter", our salutation in Arabic was, "The Lord has risen", and the response was, "He has truly risen."

Another Easter tradition was the egg cracking contest. My mother would get up early Easter morning and hard boil several dozen eggs in onion skins to give them a reddish-brown colour. We would each pick what we thought was the hardest boiled egg for the contest. The contest involved holding the egg in the palm of your hand, exposing only a little of one end, and have the challenger take the end of his or her egg and try to crack yours. Whoever ended the day without a cracked egg was the winner. The only drawback with this custom was that we ate eggs for the rest of the week.

Monday was laundry day at our house. Mom would spend the whole day at the ringer washer as soon as she got us off to school. Because we all came home for lunch, and she did not have much time to cook, we always had baked potatoes and two cans of corned beef. We considered it a real treat. Sometimes instead of corned beef, she would serve us potted meat. We had very little back yard so the clothes would be hung up throughout the house to dry.

In order to make ends meet, my mother made sure that nothing was wasted. Stale bread soaked in hot milk sprinkled with a little sugar was presented to us at breakfast as a rare treat and something that we should not expect to get too frequently.

In the spring she would send us over to the Prince of Wales College lawn (now Holland College) to pick dandelion weeds. This weed looks and tastes like endive. It must be picked before the dandelion blooms otherwise the greens will be bitter. She would wash and cut them up with onions and garlic and saute in olive oil. She would then squeeze out the excess liquid, pour a little lemon juice and eat with Pita bread.

We would have Lebanese food once a week and sometimes more often. When we brought friends home, Mom would always offer them a sample. One person who always went straight to the kitchen when he made a call was Dr. Soper. Those were the days when doctors made house calls. Because of Mom’s kidney operation and her blood pressure, Dr. Soper was a frequent visitor to the house and on each visit he would have a portion of whatever was being cooked that day. He was an excellent doctor. He was tall, handsome and full of confidence. You always felt good after

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