Americanuck

Being I guess what you would call a non-religious type person, Easter has always symbolized chocolate for me. When I was a kid it meant a hollow, waxy department store chocolate bunny, but hey it was chocolate and I had lower standards back then. I used to go through all kinds of guilt about biting off its ears, but I got over it by the time I got to the bunny’s face.

When I had kids of my own, Easter became a bit more of a celebration in the “chocolately” sense than what I had. I always made sure that the Easter Bunny gave them each a basket which contained some sort of chocolate centerpiece (always Cadbury or something of that nature) a bunch of assorted mini-eggs and a stuffed animal all which was nestled in that awful Easter grass. You know, the stuff that gets into everything and you still keep finding months later, sometimes even hanging out of your cat’s butt after they decide to EAT one of the stray strands (oh don’t get me started about cat ass projectiles, I could go on and on with the cats I’ve had!) Of course however, the main event was always the Easter egg hunt.

When Chris got a little older he helped maintain the illusion of ‘the bunny’ at least until his brother got old enough to stop believing as well. Chris would always talk up the bunny and then wink at me conspiratorially.

One year when Sean was on the verge of disbelief, they just wouldn’t go to bed early and I was exhausted and desperate to hit the sack. I kept on telling them ‘the bunny’ wouldn’t come until they went to bed, Sean of course bought it and went reluctantly off to bed but Chris, knowing better insisted on staying put and frankly I just didn’t feel like arguing the fact so I went to sleep. I set my alarm for some god-awful hour like 2 am. I couldn’t very well HIDE the eggs with one of the searcher’s sitting right there watching me.

So at 2:00 am or whenever it was, ‘the bunny’ got up and shuffled out to the living room. Ok folks, I am probably one of the worst ‘getter-uppers’ in the world, I mean I’m pure zombie material so when I say shuffled I mean shuffled. I get out there with the bags of candy in hand, my eyes barely open, paused for just a second to consider how long it would take to hide all of these eggs then decided to take handfuls and chuck them out into the room in various directions and then fell back into bed.

The next morning I get up and the first thing Sean says to me is “Mom, there must have been something wrong with the Easter Bunny this year.” “Oh?” I said. “Yeah” says Sean “The eggs were just scattered all over the floor, he didn’t even try to hide them well!” Just then one of the cats ran by me chasing one of the stray eggs and I had to hide my laugh.

Even though there is no longer any Easter Bunny believing going on in this house, it doesn’t get us off the hook when it comes to Easter egg hunts no matter how old these guys get. Tom and I diligently hide the eggs and our two boys have an all-out competition to see who scores the most chocolate. It’s a matter of pride and well, of course, chocolate.