Due to an email glitch, my column didn’t appear in the Fort Bend Herald this evening. Maybe it’ll be in tomorrow, not sure, but Happy Easter!
Easter is right around the corner, a holiday that’s one of my favorites. After all, there’s chocolate Easter bunnies, chocolate Easter eggs, chocolate Kisses and chocolate candy bars, all courtesy of a little bunny that hops around early Easter morning delivering all that for free.
Not a bad deal when you’re a kid.
Although I became the major underwriter for the Easter Bunny once I became a mom, the Easters from my childhood were carefree and filled with tradition.
Easter egg preparation began the Saturday before Easter. My mom boiled the eggs right before Saturday night dinner, and it seemed like forever between the time she’d put those eggs on the stove and when we could all sit down and dye the eggs.
Somebody always had to run to a neighbor’s house for vinegar because we never seemed to have that key Easter egg dye ingredient to pour over the Paas tablets.
We’d fight over the white wax crayon so we could write our names on our egg, but all of us cracked the shells, despite warnings from my mom.
Eventually, we’d carefully lower our egg into the color and then the real fun began – transforming dull white eggs into works of art.
Some of us gave our egg a two-toned look, while others thought if we left the egg in the same color dye for 10 minutes, ours would be the most beautiful in the carton.
Hours later, with our eggs tucked into the fridge, we’d head off to bed, dreaming of giant chocolate bunnies and red jelly beans the size of a Buick.
On Easter morning, we’d run to the living room before dawn to see what the Easter Bunny brought. We always knew which basket was ours because the Easter Bunny used the same baskets year after year, including the same shiny green polyester grass.
Our bunny was generous, covering the grass with a liberal sprinkling of jelly beans and M&Ms. We all got a tall chocolate bunny in our baskets and the order of eating said bunny was set in stone: the white candy eyes were the first to go. Next we’d snap off the ears and then we’d snap off chocolate body parts until he disappeared.
Easter Mass we simply endured.
Not because we had to dress up in stiff clothes and even stiffer shoes.
Not because we knew the service would take forever.
Not even because we were wearing Easter hats with a rubber band under our chins that cut off the circulation to our lips.
The real reason was because for the two hours spent sitting through Sunday Mass, all we could visualize was our Easter basket, filled with half-eaten jelly beans and a dismembered chocolate bunny, calling our names from across town.
Once we became adults with children of our own, we continued to hide eggs in my parents’ back yard every Easter Sunday. After we moved to Texas, we did the same for our boys until the last one left for college.
Of course, by that time, the Easter Bunny had to replace the chocolate candy in the plastic eggs with dollar bills, but the tradition remained.
Although I’m no longer helping the Easter Bunny assemble baskets of jelly beans and Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, I am keeping the bunny’s traditions alive – there’s green polyester grass in the bottom of an old Easter basket on the counter, waiting for someone to add jelly beans, M&M’s and dyed, cracked eggs early Easter Sunday morning.
Not a bad deal for the Bunny’s underwriter