During my married life, every Palm Sunday my family would attend Mass and return home with beautiful blessed palms. My family would watch my mother take the palms and lay them in damp paper towels for crafting a bit later. When she was ready, my mother would carefully uncover the paper towel and start working in silence.
My mother's hands were gifts from God. She used her talent to deftly craft long light yellow and green colored pieces of palm into beautiful handmade crosses and crowns of thorns. Each piece was different. Some were decorated with miniature roses made of ribbon; others had felt glued to the back of the crosses. All were created with love. As sacred signs of Holy Week, these treasures adorned my house. They were constant reminders that the Easter Triduum was approaching.
My family attended Mass last night so I would have time to decorate the house for Easter today. My first step was to carefully take out a box of Easter treasures, palm crosses and hand-crafted eggs, some of which were either made or bought by my mother. Next, I turned my attention to my palms. They were dry because I was too tired last night to place them in the damp cloth. I attempted to make them pliable so that I could craft the pieces into something other than a piece of palm. I cut the leftover pieces of palm and placed them in a plastic sealed bag to be used at Christmastime with the 1940's manger set. After years of family use, the straw for the manger needs replacing. The blessed straw pieces will be another reminder of the 2015 Easter season and a woman who was totally devoted to her family.
Since I am interested in preserving family memories, I turn to digital tools for the preservation of my artifacts. I successfully use PicMonkey as evidence by the first photo, but am a newcomer to Nutshell. Clearly, I need more work to be able to say I can utilize this tool with ease. No matter how many times I repeated the process, my narration was cut off in the beginning and at the end of every short video I made. If anyone can give me tips on how to master Nutshell, I will be an eager listener, or if there is an easier video tool that adds text please let me know.
I honor the tradition of turning the palms from Palm Sunday into living creations that highlight the significance of the Easter Triduum and I honor my mother's memory today.
This post is offered to three different writing communities:
- Margaret Simon's DigiLit Sunday
- Cathy Mere and Julie Johnson's Digital Maker Playground
- Day 29 of the March Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers
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