Easter Memories

Easter morning was almost as much anticipated as Christmas morning. Mom boiled eggs for us to color on Saturday. Sunday morning we would rush outside to find the hidden eggs and our baskets. Some of our baskets were paper mache rabbits like these. The basket on the back of the large bunny would have had green 'grass' in it and some jelly beans. I also remember bunnies that had a kind of fuzz on them with a slot in their back to use as coin banks.

Dying our eggs was a huge competition - whose was prettiest; most unusual, etc. When the dye kits began containing a wax pencil to draw designs on the eggs before coloring, the creativeness escalated. We learned we could have two-toned eggs by dipping each side in a different color - even how to come up with new colors by using first one dye then re-dipping the egg in another color. That didn't always work too well however when our eggs came out an icky drab green or brown.

It was at Easter that I first learned Santa Claus wasn't real. We got up before Mom had hidden our eggs and baskets. We wanted to run outside right away, but she needed to detour us. She looked out the east door and said, "Look! There goes the Easter Bunny down the sidewalk!" While we tore out of the back door to look for the Easter Rabbit, she went out the west door to hide things. Unfortunately we gave up trying to find the E B before she finished and we saw her hiding the eggs. When I confronted her about being the Easter Bunny, she admitted that there wasn't a real Easter Rabbit, that it was she. Later in the day I started putting two and two together. "Are you Santa Claus, too?" I asked. When she admitted that, too, a certain childhood innocence was lost.

By the time my children were small, the Easter baskets looked more like this - full of hollow chocolate rabbits, marshmallow peeps in pink and yellow, chocolate covered marshmallow eggs, jelly beans and fuzzy little yellow chickens - not real ones. Although when I was a child, Corning Hatchery had live colored chicks at Easter time. They dyed baby chicks in colors of green, pink and blue. I remember looking at them through the window and wanting one, but we never got any. We always had 200 baby chicks to raise in the brooder house every April. Mom didn't think we needed to pay fifty cents or a dollar for a pink or green one.

I remember my children wanting the fancy cello-wrapped Easter baskets which usually contained a stuffed animal and a few candies. Instead of buying those expensive versions, I bought plastic baskets or cheap wicker ones, green 'grass' and several bags of candy and made their baskets. We did the coloring of boiled eggs to hide around the yard, as well. There were probably some years I made their baskets out of something like a cut-down oatmeal box or reused the ones from the year before. I'm sure my Mom did the same for us - probably using the squat, round, one-pound cans coffee came in.

By the time I had grandchildren to hide Easter eggs for, the fillable plastic versions had arrived. It was so much easier to have those already filled with candy and hidden around the yard before they came for Easter dinner. Invariably every year there would be one or two we couldn't find. I would find them while mowing the yard that summer or even when hiding the eggs the following year.
Other than learning Mom was the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, my most memorable Easter was when I was 16. I decided I wanted to go to Easter Sunrise service at Fairview Church. When I got up, it had snowed overnight and was still snowing. I knew if I asked, the folks would say no to me taking the car and going, so I didn't ask. They were out in the barn doing the milking when I left. They were really upset with me for taking the car in the storm; "What if you'd gone off the road?, You're not experienced enough to drive in snow!" etc. was all I heard when I got home. They threatened to ground me for a week but later in the day my boyfriend came over and they let me go out with him.

As much fun as it was to color all those hard-boiled eggs, it wasn't easy to get them used up. Eating a couple boiled eggs was plenty. My sister, Betty, came up with a solution - "Eggs ala Goldenrod" - a fancy name for chopped boiled eggs in white sauce served over toast or biscuits. It was good. It got the eggs used up. I still think of her and her "Eggs ala Goldenrod" every Easter even though I no longer participate in coloring eggs.