In our home, it is against the law to mow the lawn before Easter Saturday. This is not a religious consideration—quite the opposite: long grass is great for the more temporal aspects of our spring celebration; you can hide eggs in the clumps.
Our egg hunts have always been on Saturday and have included candy. They are, aside from our discussions of the origin of the word “Easter” and its accompanying symbols , completely apart from the Holy nature of the Easter holidays. We keep our Sundays for that heart-wrenching celebration. And hopefully, we build our whole lives around it on a daily basis.
But this is about Eggs Through the Years, a tale wholly self-centered and silly, and joyful, and our-family-centric. Wanna come along?
For me, the colored eggs have always been magic. The smell of vinegar. The strange wire wands, the dissolving tablets of color (how could that make yellow, when it looks red?). Then the making of blown eggs, either artfully decorated, or filled with little scenes. And sugar eggs with windows. Then there’s the whole idea of hidden treasure – all you have to do is find it. Hidden everywhere. Just like life.
In the beginning was Mlle. Gin. I made her Easter dress, hemmed with lace and covered with a hand smocked apron. She was interested in the eggs.
Two years later, two people watercoloring eggs. Gin’s was black that year, but in later years become far more artistic. Cam started with color, then opted for black the next five years. The next picture in this series is of Gin’s face, looking pretty much like that egg. But I did not include it.
Another couple of years later – yes. We made our own masks.
Didn’t know it was us, didja?
And the great egg hunt began. I had always dreamed of those big egg hunts you heard about – in city parks or church grounds or whathaveyou. We went to one once. What a disillusionment. So I switched the dream: I would MAKE big egg hunts some day. Then I had kids. And friends. So i did.
Eggs, deep in the primeval back yard.
I have braces in this shot. Court was wearing pearls.
Chaz, before she became an anime character. But still in a rush for life.
Our two families did this every year – until everyone grew up and became very old.
Like this. That’s Dr. H on the right. Having a great time.
Now. Today. We begin with a new, fresh egg customer. (Wish Max had been here.) We forwent the candy, figuring he was too innocent to be acquisitive. But we were wrong about that. Too bad. Still wasn’t any candy. Now – what follows is what you expect when someone says, “Wanna see some pictures of my grandkids?” If you print these out and staple them together, you can make a flip book out of it –
Do you love this technique? So polite.
Dad said, “He can climb this.” What you don’t hear is Mom and Gram breathing. Note that, from this point on, it’s all Dad filming (HD camera in his iPhone) ALL the time.
Rescued from the high place.
He finds The Nest. In the guise of a small green snack-box. What could be in it?
A red airplane, actually.
And this winds up the egg finding. What starts now is the egg FIGHTING. I found this blog (I should find the credit, because it was cool – I’ll find it, promise!) where she was talking about their traditional family egg fights, using confetti filled eggs that are called – something Italian or Spanish – which you can now buy at Walmart (should you not have time to empty 20 dozen eggs and fill them yourself). We are beginning our own family fight with one dozen.
Remind me not to play with her anymore.
Got MOM!! Can you see how dreary the day was? It was about 41 degrees outside. ON THE 23rd of APRIL.
Scoot SCORES!!
See? You can get all grown up and have children and still be kids.
Which one shall I huck at Dad? Hmmmmm –
GOT him!
Conclusion: I think this is worth doing again.
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