Easter Sunday is this weekend, and the holiday always takes me down memory lane.
I remember shopping for Easter clothes with my mom when I was a little girl.
The floral Easter dress always included white gloves and frilly white ankle socks.
The best part of getting ready was picking out an Easter hat. I never liked the rubber band under my chin to hold the hat on as it cut into my neck.
By the time I was old enough to make sure the hat didn’t blow away, I no longer cared about Easter hats.
We usually attended Easter Sunday Mass because we were busy dyeing Easter eggs the night before. The must-have item for coloring Easter eggs was the square Paas Easter Egg kit.
Inside were tablets in different colors – red, yellow, blue and green are the shades I remember. We’d drop each tablet into a coffee cup and then measure out the vinegar, something our pantry never seemed to keep on hand.
Luckily there were neighbors who bailed us out.
Also in the kit were wire egg holders, and we fought like cats and dogs to use those. There was also a white wax crayon to write our names on before dyeing the eggs.
The kit included stickers – which we fought over – and paper stands representing the Easter Bunny, baby chicks and other cute animals. These stands held our dyed eggs and, like with everything else in the kit, we fought over those.
My mom would go behind us and “marbleize” the eggs with cooking oil, and we groaned and complained every year that she’d ruined our mottled and uneven dye jobs.
The next morning, after the Easter Bunny did his job, we’d enjoy an Easter Egg Hunt. I don’t remember any of us getting food poisoning because the eggs were all over the house and yard for hours, just waiting for us to find them.
For the next week, it was chicken or tuna salad sandwiches, chock full of chopped hard-boiled eggs.
I kept the tradition of dyeing Easter eggs alive with my boys from when they were in elementary school until they were in high school, but I think I enjoyed the ritual more than they did.
Our grandchildren dye their eggs at home with their parents and siblings, and we love seeing pictures and videos. We don’t intrude because I know how precious those memories with children are.
One year, I tried dyeing eggs by myself, but that was more depressing than not dyeing eggs at all. So, I stopped buying two dozen eggs and a new Paas dye kit. I substituted eating a bag of Cadbury eggs to soothe my missing those long-gone evenings.
These days, we host an annual Easter egg hunt for the grandchildren at the house with Uncle Nick and Aunt Ingrid taking on the responsibility of hiding eggs.
The kiddos stand at the back door, not peeking, anxiously awaiting the signal to hit the back yard and find the eggs. The patio’s off limits to the older ones as that’s where Nick and Ingrid hide the eggs for the toddlers.
Then the race begins, candies are found, traded, hoarded and enjoyed the rest of the day.
For those fortunate enough to still dye and hide Easter eggs with your children, savor and enjoy every minute of chaos.
The years fly by faster than the Easter Bunny hops through your yard the night before Easter.
May your holiday be holy and happy!
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.