Folks who stop by Jean Gwilliam’s acreage home near Namao may find themselves already smiling by the time they get to her door. It’s as if the Easter Bunny visited early because dozens of plastic eggs are suspended from the trees along the driveway. More eggs are sprinkled near the steps and once inside, the house is so chockfull of Easter and life and sunshine, it’s impossible not to feel joyful.
Gwilliam, 73, began her collection almost 40 years ago after a niece, who was a preschooler at the time, blew out a hen’s egg and decorated it as a gift for her aunt. Now that collection fills every single room in her home.
“I have 60 file-sized boxes filled with Easter eggs,” said Gwilliam, who like many collectors, likes playing the numbers game.
She knows how many eggs are on the spruce trees outside; how many are on each picture frame down the hallway toward the bedrooms and how many are on the artificial turquoise spruce tree in the front room.
“There are 500-plus on the tree. After 500, I stopped counting,” she said, adding, “I love my Easter tree.”
Eggs are scattered haphazardly here and there, as if a rabbit hopped through and spontaneously dropped eggs in random places.
But there is nothing random about Gwilliam’s choice of home place. She was born a few miles from where she still lives, in the house which she and her late husband, Dave, built shortly after marrying in 1961. She attended Namao School as a child and later worked there for 37 years as a secretary. She travelled a bit when younger, but for the most part is content to live at home and has burrowed in for the long haul.
“I’ve no desire to go. Travelling is not my thing but I’ve always enjoyed decorating my home,” she said.
Decorating is an ongoing passion that Gwilliam enjoys year round from landscaping her acreage to trying different decorating themes inside.
“I’m better off when I have too much to do than not enough. You’ve got to think young and plan for next year,” she said, adding that Easter is her favourite theme because it’s different than the norm.
“People love the Easter eggs outside on the trees. One year I left them off the trees and everyone asked me to put them back again.”
She sticks to a Beatrix Potter/Peter Rabbit theme, which matches the pastel colours of her home. There’s a spring-like pink/mint green/buttercup-yellow colour to most of her eggs, rather than the more opulent Ukrainian style.
“I have one Ukrainian egg, which was a treasured gift from a friend, but I like the softer colours best,” Gwilliam said.
Her life has obviously changed since Dave died nine years ago, but it’s not just being widowed that is different for her. Other friends have died and other neighbours have moved from their acreages to condos in the city. In many ways the egg collection is a rejuvenation of spirit and life for this senior.
“Every year I try to add to the collection. I go to flea markets and look for them. I’m always on the lookout and when I see something different, I think, ‘would that work for Easter?’”
Where there used to be just a few hundred eggs inside, now there are thousands. Outside she used to hang a few pastel ornaments to amuse passersby. Now there are so many, she needs a wheelbarrow to carry them around the yard.
Each egg comes with a memory and a story. She shows the eggs that are so tiny they look like dots in little tiny china eggshells. She has a golden-coloured egg, purchased for just a few dollars at an antique shop and 100-year-old salt and pepper shakers that once belonged to her husband’s aunt. She also shows the ones she purchased just this spring.
“I remember the time I bought each one or who gave them to me,” she said. “I couldn’t say I like one more than another. They are all special and I like when I put them out and when I take them down and I come to handle each one and enjoy them again.”
