We turned the television on at 11 a.m. and there, just like they have been since I was in high school, was one of television’s superstar couples, Nikki and Victor from “The Young and The Restless.”

Victor’s a little grayer, and Nikki looks like she’s had a little touch-up surgery, but there’s no mistaking the popularity of a couple that’s divorced, reconciled, fought and loved each other to the extent these two have over the past 30 years.

“So what’s the problem this week?” I asked my mom who’s an avid Y&R fan.

“We’re not sure who the father is of Nikki’s son,” she replied. Then she gave me the background of all of Nikki’s affairs and the possible blood lines of her children.

“People who post to the message board have all kinds of ideas about what Victor’s up to and what Nikki’s next scheme will be,” my mom added.

My youngest brother was in the room with us, and he tried to hide a smile behind his laptop.
It’s hard for him to understand the trials and tribulations of the people in Genoa City and why their shenanigans have kept viewers captivated for years.
The story of Nikki and Victor includes numerous divorces, amnesia, alcoholism, betrayal and murders. You know, all the run-of-the-mill tribulations every-day people face.

“I’d never get involved in those soaps again,” I told my mother, opening my laptop to check my email. “All those ridiculous storylines that nobody could ever believe.”

The first email was from my son, Stephen. He and I routinely compare notes on HBO’s popular mini-series “Game of Thrones.” I’d sent him an email after the season finale so we could compare our thoughts about what’s going to happen in the next season.
My main question was about who’d be riding the dragons when the series returned.

He replied that the message boards were hot for Bran riding a dragon, but we’re not sure because Bran, who has the gift of second sight, will probably become a seer and bond with the heart tree.
Then there’s the fate of The Imp, who just finished killing his former lover and his father, and the evil Cersei Lannister who had three children fathered by her twin brother, Jamie. Don’t even get me started on the anguish Jon Snow is feeling after watching the love of his life, Ygritte, die right in front of his eyes.

My brother asked what I was doing and I told him I was drafting a message to my son about the “Game of Throne’s” finale. My mom asked what I was talking about and I started filling her in on the show’s back story.
Just about the time I got to the part about Daneryn “Khaleesi” Targaryen being the mother of dragons and hatching them out of the fire, my brother looked at me over the top of his laptop screen.

“So you want to give Mom a hard time about watching a soap opera when you’re discussing the fate of flying dragons?” he said, a smile on his face.
I started to say the show I was watching was much more highbrow than an ordinary soap, but clamped my mouth shut when I realized the big pile of hypocrisy I was stepping into.

I’m just as guilty of being a soap opera addict as my mother, but secretly, I know I’m a cut above. After all, “Game of Thrones” is science fiction and the first word in that description is science and that’s about real stuff.

Now let’s see what the message boards have to say about Jon Snow’s hair…

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Time crawls along slowly in a hospital. The hands of the big clock on the wall seem to reluctantly click from one number to the next.
Here, time is measured, not in minutes, but from when the nurse comes into the room and when she’ll return, when the doctor is scheduled to come in and when lunch will arrive.

And in between those events is an almost unbearable period of waiting.

I’m with my mom following her left knee replacement surgery, and she came through the procedure with flying colors. She’s spending the next week or so in in a rehabilitation center, and life here is different from life in the outside world.
Before 7 a.m., Mom’s in the gym where physical therapists guide patients through leg lifts and arm stretches. A stopwatch sits next to Mom and she has to lift her leg as many times as she can until the buzzer goes off.
Next to her, an elderly lady – her hair Lady Clairol Jet Black, her thin arms a difficult road map of purple skin and raised veins – sits erectly in a wheelchair and stares into space. 

“It’s time for me to go back to my room,” she announces to no one in particular.

A young therapist, her pony tail bouncing, tries to convince this woman the exercises are for her own good, but she shifts in her wheelchair and her mouth tightens.  

“I’m not doing anything except going home,” the woman says and everyone in the room looks away, concentrating on their own exercises.
They know if they allow their minds to drift away, they might never come back. They know without the exercises, their bodies will go back to the state they were in before they came in for surgery, and they don’t want that, most of all my mom.

At 81, she’s setting the bar high. She completes all her exercises and follows all the rules. She doesn’t complain, even when the physical therapy is tough for her. But for a woman used to living on her own, living on someone else’s time schedule has been difficult.

Like many seniors, she’s developed her own routine. Dinner’s about 6 p.m. followed by whatever’s on TV or a community meeting. She goes to bed when she’s ready and gets up when her body tells her.
But not in the hospital. She’s on someone else’s schedule where the base structure is marking time and waiting.
In the evenings, we wait for the nurse to come and dispense night-time medication. We can hear the heavy cart beeping as it rolls down the hall and the creak of one of the heavy doors as the nurse enters a patient’s room.

We know the nurse will be in that room for at least 20 minutes, so we chit chat until Mom dozes off or talk about the mindless shows on television that, because there’s no other game in town, hypnotize us.

When the cart stops outside our door, we wait for the nurse to pull up the right chart and come in with the meds, to readjust the dressing on Mom’s knee and perform all the routine blood pressure and temperature checks.

The nurse leaves and Mom is instantly asleep as she’s waited as long as she could wait for the nurse to come and, now that she’s finished, she can finally go to sleep.

Mom will sleep until the next time the nurse comes in to check her vital signs. And then wait for the routine to begin again.

And we’ll wait until it’s time for Mom to go home and she can go back to living on her own time.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald

I looked up at the top of the slide and standing there, his hands on his hips, a bright red cape tied around his neck, was my 2-year-old grandson.

“Who are you?” I called to him as I walked up.

“Superman,” he said, sliding down the slide and jumping up at the bottom, just like the Man of Steel does when he lands.  

James flung his cape behind him and took off, on his way to foil a villain. As he ran across the playground, he kept looking behind him, making sure his cape was flapping in the wind. Every once in a while, he’d stop and pretend to karate chop the bad guys.  

That scene took me back 25 years to when his father ran around with a cape pretending to be Batman or Superman, depending on his mood for the day. I could also picture my youngest brother who did the same when he was a preschooler, terrorizing all the mailboxes up and down our street with his super-human strength.

Children love to pretend they have magical super powers, and when mom ties a cape around their shoulders, they transform into someone with incredible powers to rule the universe.

Or at least the family dog or a much younger brother or sister.

 

Started Early

In our family, the love affair with super heroes started when we were kids. My dad would often stop at the local 7-11 on his way home and pick up comics for all of us. I was an “Archie” comic lover while my brothers preferred “Silver Surfer” or “The Flash.”

At night, we’d pass around the comics and my brothers grudgingly read “Baby Louie” while I came to love their superhero comic books. I didn’t care for the war comic books as they were too gruesome, but I loved the Marvel and DC heroes, especially Wonder Woman with her invisible plane.

When the insecure teenager Peter Parker first appeared as Spiderman, I was hooked. I couldn’t identify with either Batman or Superman as they seemed invincible, even though Batman was still a human and Superman could be foiled by a chunk of green kryptonite.

But Peter Parker was a superhero with acne, no money and no friends. He couldn’t get a girlfriend, everybody hated Spiderman and Parker got pushed around all the time. I couldn’t get enough of those comics and, to this day, I’ll choose Spidey over Superman.

When my boys were growing up, they too loved Spiderman until the X-Men came along. They had every action figure from the series – Gambit, Wolverine, Sabretooth and Beast – and they had constant wars with Batman and Superman.

They also loved dressing up like their favorite superheroes, so we had a variety of capes – a red one they could wear to pretend to be Superman, a black one so they could be Batman and some generic capes they could wear just to be wearing a cape.

They wore those capes everywhere we went. We were like the Justice League in the grocery store when they’d march down the produce aisle, their capes providing them with super-human power against the broccoli and eggplant.

Watching my grandson run around the playground, his imagination providing him with bad guys to fight and foes to overcome, I felt as if I’d stepped back in time. I was so happy he’d inherited his father’s love of playing superhero and glad I was there to watch him protect the world.

After all, isn’t that what all superheroes are supposed to do?

 This column originally appeared in The Fort Bend Herald.

    He died on Memorial Day, fitting as Bert Bauerlin’s service to country during World War II was one of his proudest achievements. But for my family, “Mr. Bert” was our mom’s boyfriend and the second grandfather to my sister’s family.

When my sister and her family moved to Virginia, Bert and Mary Bauerlin were their friendly neighbors. I remember my niece and nephews always talking about Mr. Bauerlin – watching him tinker around in the garage and telling stories – and the love they had for their next-door adopted grandfather was evident.

When Mary passed away, my sister and her family grieved with Bert and, as the years passed, learned to go on. Then one day, Bert noticed the attractive widow visiting next door, and Bert and my mother began talking.

Theirs was a conversation that lasted over 10 years. Every night at precisely 10, my mom’s phone would ring and everything came to an abrupt pause while Mom had her conversation with Bert.

We didn’t mind. In fact, we were reassured that someone was checking on Mom every day. Bert’s children were also reassured their father had someone checking on him every day. 

Bert never missed a holiday – Christmas, Mother’s Day, Mom’s birthday and Valentine’s Day always meant a knock at the door with a beautiful arrangement of fresh-cut flowers. Mom loved talking about Bert, and she actually blushed when we’d tease her about her boyfriend.

Bert kept up with the accomplishments and escapades of the Hebert family, and we kept up with the comings and goings of the Bauerlin family. Mom and Bert’s vacations always included stops at their children’s’ homes, especially when they were on the way to Bert’s favorite getaway – his Navy reunions.

The last one they attended was tinged with sadness as so many of the World War II veterans were passing away. The trips grew harder now that most were in their late 80’s or early 90s.

He also loved coming to Mardi Gras in Louisiana, and that’s the only time I met Bert in person. He was gracious and smiling and knew something about everyone from my mother’s stories.

He especially wanted to thank me for sending him one of my favorite movies, “Searching for Bobby Fisher” because Bert was an avid chess player and he loved the story of father and son bonding over the art of chess.

We were all so grateful Bert had come into my mother’s life and she into his.  They shared the same memories from growing up in the Depression to listening to Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” to muttering about the downhill slide of the American youth.

They needed each other to appreciate the old days and to understand the present ones.

Last year, Bert ended up in an assisted living center to recuperate from an illness. The 88-year-old desperately wanted to go back to living on his own terms where he could watch his black-and-white movies of The Duke and Charles Bronson without interruption.

But his health began to deteriorate, and the sharp, quick-witted and self-sufficient Bert began to grow fainter. For Mom, not getting that 10 p.m. phone call was devastating, but she came to gradually accept that the Bert she knew was, little by little, fading.

And although we grieve that Bert’s no longer here, Mom said he’s passed to the next level and that’s what he wanted.

I shall always think fondly of Bert whenever I look at an American flag, knowing how proud he was to have served his country.

Rest well, Mr. Bert. You’ve earned it.

 This article was published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I’m exasperated if it takes Google longer than 30 seconds to load.

I’m tapping my foot impatiently if I’m in the slow line at the market.

I completely blow a fuse when the driver at the front of the left-turn lane is asleep when the green arrow flashes and I have to sit through an extra light cycle.

So I’m wondering why it is I love to watch baseball games, a sport that moves at its own pace.  Over the past two weeks, I’ve watched a baseball game at Minute Maid Park – where Nolan Ryan walked past me and I didn’t realize it was the great pitcher until he’d rounded the corner – and in Sugar Land to watch the Skeeters play.

In Houston, the Astros tickets were a lot more expensive, and we had to shell out money to park. Both had overpriced drinks and processed cheese nachos, but that 25-minute drive home in Fort Bend County was a lot easier than the 45-minute trek from downtown Houston.

Both parks buzz with activity before the games. At Minute Maid, the outfield was meticulously groomed, and scores of workers raked the infield so that not a footprint was left.

They did the same at Constellation Field although it was hard to keep the field immaculate with so many youngsters on the infield for pictures and awards.

What’s the same at both parks is that all fans want their home team to win. They know the  players’ bios by heart, boo the umpire when there’s a bad call and cheer like mad when a baseball soars into home-run territory.

Both teams love the youngsters. The Skeeters organization honored a variety of youngsters before the game started. Fans were clapping and laughing good naturedly as star-struck 5-year-old Little Leaguers ran from first base over the pitcher’s mound and then across the field to their moms.

At the Astros game, people stood and applauded as a young cancer patient stood on the pitcher’s mound, took his wind up and threw the ball to home plate. Catcher Jason Castro ran the ball back to the young boy and then signed it for him.

I don’t think there was a dry eye in the place when Castro gave that young boy a hug before heading back to the dugout.

When it was time for the first pitch, excitement filled the air, even though the Astros aren’t having that great of a season. That’s because true fans never doubt their team will rally and put runs on the board. And the fans are what make both the Skeeters games and the Astros games so special.

At Minute Maid, we chatted with Julie, a plain-clothed security guard in our section. She said she’d been coming to the ball park for over 10 years, and she never tired of the crack of the bat, the sounds of the crowd cheering when an Astros player smacked a ball out to the Crawford Boxes and of seeing the youngsters clutching their well-oiled mitts to their chests, hoping they’ll catch a foul ball.

They should never stop hoping because when we were at the Astros game, two twins, well into their 70s, were lucky and quick enough to catch a foul ball when it came their way.

The smile on their face could’ve belonged to one of those 5-year olds running the bases at any baseball game in any stadium in the United States.

So I’ll still honk my horn in agitation at the daydreaming driver at the front of the left-turn lane but I’ll sit back in my seat at the ball park and happily sing – “take me out to the ball game.”

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

  There’s a story in Texas folklore about a freed slave, Celia Allen, who ran a small bread bakery in a  settlement called San Felipe de Austin, named after Stephen F. Austin who came to settle a new land back in 1824. Three hundred families followed him to a country on the cusp of revolution.

San Felipe de Austin was a bustling place where settlers received their land grants and headed out into the wilds of Texas. The revolution caught up with them, and in 1836, settlers burned the entire town during the Runaway Scrape so Santa Anna could not set up camp there or find any provisions.

San Felipe de Austin faded from Texas history as settlements like Washington-on-the-Brazos and the Alamo took a more prominent place in the books.

In the 1920s, the community decided to preserve and highlight the importance of San Felipe. According to Bryan McAuley, the San Felipe de Austin State Historical Site Manager, locals started building up the site.

We learned these facts, and much more, when we drove over to San Felipe de Austin State Historical Site 35 miles west of Rosenberg. There I saw two familiar faces from Fort Bend County – Anise Divin and Shelley Wong – and their knowledge about this area is quite interesting. 

A boisterous tavern and a general store welcomed new settlers, and one of the earliest Texas newspapers printed from San Felipe from 1829 to 1832.The paper was the unofficial voice of the Texas revolution movement.

Standing on the quiet prairie surrounding a huge granite statue of Stephen F. Austin, it’s hard to picture the area as a gateway boom town to the new frontier. The on-site museum, modeled after the Josey General Store that once served the community, is deceiving. The outside appears simple and plain, but the inside is chocked full of first-rate educational posters and artifacts.

There’s a replica of the original land grant book, and I was grateful when Shelley showed me the painstakingly neat land book. Copies of paintings of the early days of San Felipe are on display as are toys children love figuring out.

Shelley and Anise kept us entertained with stories about the early settlers, especially of the women who played an important part in Texas history. They also knew some of the descendants of those early settlers, and many of the names are still prominent in current Fort Bend County community endeavors.

 Exploring the Site

Reluctantly we left the museum and wandered over to a log cabin. Built in the shot-gun style, a room on one side of the breezeway has a big box of Lincoln Logs where children can build their own log cabins.

Behind the log cabin is a field separated from the property by a wooden fence built in the same style the early Texans used. The field beyond the fence was dotted with vibrant wildflowers and yellow butterflies, and I wondered how many people had stood in this same spot, looking at an open land filled with possibilities and opportunity.

The historical site is located at 15945 FM 1458 just south of Interstate 10 east of Sealy. There are plans to build an Austin Colony Museum across the street and to fill it with artifacts from the site.

 Do yourself a favor. Take a leisurely drive north on State Highway 36 and enjoy the open farmlands and prairies along the way. So much has changed in Texas, and it’s easy to think skyscrapers and shopping malls have taken over the land.

Until you look out over an open meadow in San Felipe and see the dream that called so many to this wide-open land we call Texas.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Walking past dozens of Mother’s Day cards in the store, I can’t help thinking of all of those who’ve lost their mother, and how much their hearts must ache whenever this holiday rolls around. Even if your mother is still alive or is sadly no longer here, there is one thing that lasts forever – their advice.

On this Mother’s Day, I’d like to share some of the gems I’ve heard, not only from my mom but from the women in my life I consider “mom figures” for their zest for living, strength in getting up when life knocked them down and honesty in telling me to pull on my big-girl pants and get on with life when I needed  a kick start.

“Your face will freeze like that.” This line was my least favorite as a kid. I vowed I’d never say those words to my children, but when my youngest son stuck out his tongue at me, they came tumbling out of my mouth. The result wasn’t what I expected.

“Really!” he said, his eyes getting big. “Can my face really freeze like this because that would be so cool.”

So much for that gem.

“You need to clean your plate because there are starving children in China.” I can blame my constant battle with the scale on these few words because, growing up Catholic, guilt was the cornerstone of my life.  

No way I could ever leave those green beans on the plate and not picture the starving Chinese as I tried to go to sleep. Believing my sons would share my same guilt when I piled green beans on their plate, I did not get the same reaction.

“Not even starving Chinese people would eat those green beans,” they said.

My Cajun grandmother could always be counted on to say something mysterious about life. One summer, she was visiting and saw me eat the soft part of my sandwich and leave the crust on the plate.

“If you don’t eat the crust, you won’t have lace on your blouse,” she said. I gobbled up the crust, never thinking she might be pulling my leg to get me to eat all my lunch.

I tried that approach on my nieces when they were young. They looked at me and said, “Aunt Denise, eating the crust won’t put lace on your blouse. Lace comes from the store.”

How come I wasn’t that smart at five?

My mom, however, is the deep well of wise words. When I was pregnant, I always carried the baby at least two weeks past my due date.

“When the apple’s ripe, it will fall from the tree,” my mother said over and over.

Ten days after my due date, she said those words for the hundredth time, and my volcanic reply was I hoped that apple rotted.

Despite the clichés, there are words from the smart women in my life I’ll always treasure. My aunt’s words to me when I was an ugly duckling seventh grader: “What counts is what’s in your heart and your head, not what you look like on the outside, even though you are beautiful.”

And, my favorite words:  “sleep tight until the morning light” as my mom kissed me on the forehead and tucked the covers up under my chin before gently turning out the light.

Because they meant so much to me, I’ve said those words to my boys when I tucked them into bed, and I whisper them to my grandchildren when they spend the night.

On this Mother’s Day, I hope all moms, including dads, aunts, friends, cousins and grandmothers who serve as mom,  have a happy and blessed Mother’s Day.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I realized I might be over the edge when I stood behind an elderly lady in the drugstore line, tapping my feet and rolling my eyes as she was taking forever to decide between writing a check or using a credit card.

I was convinced I was out of control when the slow cashier – who made the mistake of asking me if I wanted to apply for a store credit card – got the full brunt of my exasperation when I grabbed my shopping bag out of her hand and stomped out of the store.  

Did these two not realize the people in the line at five in the afternoon were hungry and tired?

Two miles down the road, I realized I’d left one of the shopping bags in the store. I was too far down the road in heavy traffic to go back, and I let out a scream in frustration.

People are so stupid, I fumed as we all came to a grinding rush-hour halt. My mood didn’t improve as I looked at the people in the cars around me.

One young girl was checking the messages on her cell phone. Typical, I thought.

A young woman in another car was talking on her cell phone. Figures, I thought.

One man was hunched over his mini van’s steering wheel, his head turned to one side as he stared out the window. I know how you feel buddy, I thought.

Horns were blaring, but that was a far distant noise because my thoughts kept guiltily returning to the elderly lady in the line. Her only crime was being a little addled. She wasn’t purposefully out to get me, so why had I blown a fuse.

The rationalizations kicked in. I was tired. I was running late. The sales clerk was a moron.

These weren’t answers.

They were excuses.

I looked again at the people around me. The young girl checking her cell phone was driving a beat-up car, and there was a community college tag hanging from her rear-view mirror. Instead of thinking she was gossiping , maybe she was reassuring her mother she was on her way home.

The young woman on her cell next to me was laughing, totally tuning out the frustration I’d been feeling. I realized she’d found the silver lining in the traffic situation.

The man hunched over his steering wheel looked exhausted. Perhaps he’d been up since dawn, making the commute to a job so he could support his family, putting his needs behind the needs of his family.

I could be wrong about all these people, but just thinking their path was worse than mine opened up a flood gate of empathy and the anger left. In its place was shame, so I made a promise that the next time I was in line, I’d remember the manners my mother taught me and not take out my bad mood on an innocent person.

The next day, I was in line at the grocery store and found myself behind an elderly gentleman. He was fumbling with the change in his pocket and apologized for taking so long.

“That’s no problem, sir,” I said. “You take your time. I’m in no hurry.”

He smiled and so did I. That little change in attitude on my part made all the difference in the world to both of us. I can’t guarantee my frustration won’t boil over again, but there was calm in the check-out line instead of anger.

And calm in my soul.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I’m hosting a bridal shower for a friend’s son this weekend, and I was talking over the menu with my mom. She’s an entertaining expert and gave the green light to fruit and vegetable trays and my punch recipe.

Then we got to the subject I was trying to avoid – the sandwich tray.

In my experience, the “let’s-give-a-shower” world is divided into two parts – those who cut the crusts off the sandwiches and those who do not.

My mom is in the first camp – she wouldn’t dream of having a social gathering without a tray of crust-less, triangular-shaped sandwiches.

I danced around the issue but she’s a cagey inquisitor.

“It’s easy to make sandwiches yourself,” my mom said. “You know how to make chicken salad, right?”

“Of course, Mom,” I replied, thinking I’d stop by the grocery store and pick up two pre-made containers from the deli.

“You’re not thinking of getting that chicken salad from the deli are you,” my mother said.

Busted.

“The only good chicken salad is the kind you make yourself,” she continued. “You do have a food processor, don’t you?”

It’s common knowledge in the family that I don’t have a food processor. In fact, I am the only female in the entire Hebert family – cousins included – that does not own a food processor.

“I can just use the hand mixer,” I told her.

“That won’t work,” my mother said. “You’ll have to make that chicken salad the old-fashioned way – chop everything up nice and fine. Now back to that bread. You do have an electric knife to cut off the crusts, don’t you?”

I decided to be brave. After all, I’ve gone through natural childbirth three times. I’ve driven on the 610 Loop during rush-hour traffic. I’ve worn a bathing suit in public. I decided to come clean.

“Mom, I’m not going to cut the crusts off the bread,” I said.

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“I don’t think I heard you,” she said. “I thought you said you weren’t going to cut the crusts off the bread. Everybody knows that when you go to a shower, the sandwiches are crust-less. Leaving them on is strictly a no-no.”

I took another deep breath.

“Well, I’m not going to waste a perfectly good part of a sandwich just so it looks good,” I said.

And there it was, the diving line in the chicken salad.

There are those who do not cut the crusts off the bread. The only silver we own is in our mouths and serving food from the counter is perfectly fine. We wear faded shorts, color our hair with the assistance of Lady Clairol and believe 10-year-old T-shirts aren’t old – they’re vintage.

And then there’s the ones in my mother’s camp. They polish the silver before family functions, put out pink and green dessert mints for every social gathering and wouldn’t dream of putting crust-less sandwiches on a serving tray that wasn’t first lined with white paper doilies.

“You can do whatever you want,” my mom said. “Just know that when your guests see those crusts on the sandwiches, they’ll know you were either ill-informed about the correct way to put on a shower or you were too busy to do things the right way.”

A daughter knows when she’s lost the argument.

“Okay, I’ll cut the crusts off,” I said, sighing. “You win.”

Even we hippies know when to throw in the towel. In this case, as my mother informed me, that towel had better be a white linen one with a monogram on the front.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

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