posted
So I realized this weekend that my favorite Easter memory is this:
I'm eight. Easter morning dawned as I glanced over at my pink alarm clock. I raced from my bed and into the living room downstairs, where I find the morning Easter baskets on the bumper pool table. The baskets only hold my attention for a brief amount of time--not because of ADHD--but because there are large white footprint, PAWprints, around the baskets. They're in the living room, up the stairs I'd just raced down, through the kitchen and dining room, leading outside the front door. I blew open the front door, trouncing around the soft spring snow of the front yard, tracking the giant bunny pawprints, the giant bunny paw depressions in the snow, until they faded off into the woods.
I stood there, on the edge of the rough woods and my soft yard, realizing the Easter bunny had really been there, that I'd come close to meeting it, that it cared enough to check on us while we slept.
I loved it.
A few years later, rummaging through the garage, I found a piece of plywood in the shape of a bunny paw, large like the prints I'd tracked some years before. At my wise old age of 11 or 12, I realized my father had done this thing for me, my dad had taken the time to shape and form meaningless plywood into a mechanism for forming bunnyprints, into a mechanism to show care and interest in the lives of his children, in the life of his oldest, despite the near constant disinterest and physical abuse, there was something there, a spark that relayed his care.
He loved me.
I held on to this as I grew, grasping that one memory through the turmoil of a teen fighting to escape, the despair of a young adult struggling to find parents that almost never existed.
But my father did, in that one small moment, and I clung to it, holding it tight to my wanting heart, that somewhere, deep inside, my father had the ability to show love the right way.
...
A few years ago, before my family completely blew apart, before I lost track of my mother, and gave up hope in my father, I'd talked with my mother about this memory.
She said to me, "But that wasn't your father. It was the neighbor. He thought it would be a great thing to do, and loved it, because he didn't have kids."
My fingers let go of the air of the warm memory of my father.
............
What are the best Easter (bunny) memories of others?
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
The story that got told every Easter at my house had nothing to do with me. It was a generation old but I still liked it. I can visualize it as if I was there.
My grandfather was an Army Chaplain. For a brief while my dad as a young child had a pet rabbit (I forget its name) Somehow (and it wasn't due to pranksters as far as they know) it got loose on Easter Morning. So the Base Chaplain, a Personage of Dignity (well Expected Dignity anyway) was running around outside in his bathrobe chasing a rabbit on Easter Morning, before he went to church to give the most important sermon of the year. And they say the Easter Bunny doesn't exist...
posted
<grin> Ok Icky, you had me wondering if I was loony for a second there!
The other vivid memory I have was post-Easter actually. About two months later when THAT SMELL IN THE LIVING ROOM was discovered to be an Easter Egg that my parents had hidden too well. They couldn't remember where it was either after they hid it.
posted
AJ, last night THAT SMELL IN THE ER was the maggots in her feet. *shudder One of my less auspicious Easter memories, although it probably ranks even lower on the patient's.
On the other hand, my eldest brother was almost arrested for attempted burglary when he and a friend came to our house in the wee hours (after the bars closed!) to hide Easter eggs. We younger kids slept through the police sirens, fortunately.
The best Easter tradition ever was getting to pick out a special tuft of new grass in the yard after the snow melted, carefully ringing it with tiny stickposts, and then finding it filled with eggs and treats on Easter morning. *grin
The time we had the Easter Egg hunt while camping with friends. Someone stuck an egg in the exhaust pipe of one of the RV's. No one found it until they tried unsuccessfully to start the RV.
Or there was the time that my parents and grand mother spent the morning hiding easter eggs, only to have the new dog chase behind them, dig them up and bring them back home.
Or there was the time I got up and ran to the table and found a whole dozen easter eggs just sitting on the table. The Easter Bunny forgot to hide them. I was sent back to my room, with my brothers, as the Easter Bunny was called back to hide them all.
But my favorite easter was this one. In four days I fly off to Moscow to meet the children we are adopting. We know nothing about these children.
I have an Easter Bunny suit and make some extra money playing the easter bunny. THis year, every child I sat on my lap, or picked up, or helped find the easter egg, I thought, could be just like my child. From the infants I cradled in my arms to the bully who stomped on my toes, I smiled through it all thinking, "These could be just like mine."
Adopting in the spring leaves me giddier than a Hatrack couple.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:I have an Easter Bunny suit and make some extra money playing the easter bunny. THis year, every child I sat on my lap, or picked up, or helped find the easter egg, I thought, could be just like my child. From the infants I cradled in my arms to the bully who stomped on my toes, I smiled through it all thinking, "These could be just like mine."
Adopting in the spring leaves me giddier than a Hatrack couple.
posted
At Utah State, there has been a tradition for at least the last fifty years or so that on Easter Sunday afternoon, citizens of the town climb to the top of Old Main Hill and roll the decorated Easter eggs down the hill.
They break, of course. We have races. We boil extra eggs in order to be able to roll them. Why do the citizens of Logan do this? No one knows. But I love it - it's quirky enough to be straight out of Stars Hollow. The only downside is that the hill is covered with egg corpses for the next two weeks, until the flocks of sea gulls finish eating them all. And, uh, sea gulls can be messy...
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
CT you and Wes should trade stories. He came home from Honduras with all kinds of stories. When they do medical clinics in the villages, he is charge of wound care.
My best Easter memories revolve around the years my grandmother would make me a dress. Sitting in the fabric shop up on those stools, flipping through huge catalogs my hands were barely big enough to turn, pointing out dresses I liked...then, pattern in hand, walking through the aisles to find that perfect fabric that would make the dress something special.
I never appreciated until I began to sew myself how much work it was for her. How much she must have loved me.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I always tell myself that it’s the little things people do for you, that ultimately shows you that they care. To be able to redeem a person based on that one good memory, speaks volumes for you. Whether or not this perception of the world is true, and whether or not one person can be redeemed based on one action, is entirely irrelevant. It is the simple fact that you have such a big heart, as to be able to love a person despite their faults, that makes me admire you all the more.
Keep in mind, I do in fact, believe that your father is a bastard. I can imagine putting your heart and soul into that one little memory only to find out years later, that the memory wasn’t true. I would be crushed too. Your father did not deserve the care from you for something that he didn’t even do or even something he did, but did without much effort. From what I have gathered from you, you appear to have lived through a very tough life- and yet you still came out of all this wreckage, a good person. Try not too put too much thought or pain into that false memory, your father simply does not deserve it.
posted
This really doesn't compare to everyone else's memories, but here goes:
When I was little, about six or seven, maybe, I was spending Easter at my paternal grandparent's house. Both of my parents are from Mississippi, and since it's only an 8-10 hour drive from home, that means we traveled during every break from school.
It was Easter morning, and my little brother and I were playing with our toys and eating our chocolate eggs. Our Easter baskets were christening presents, hand-made, old-fashioned wooden ones, with my name spelled correctly on the side in pink paint. The center-piece of our Easter baskets was a huge chocolate egg, with my name once again spelled correctly in pink icing. Jamie had his in blue icing, and we had both already eaten the icing off them by lunchtime.
At dinner that night, we had spaghetti, made with 'homemade' meat sauce (sidenote: My father's mother can't cook to save her life, but that's another story).
So my uncle Bobby looks at me and Jamie and goes, "I saw the Easter bunny last night."
Me and Jamie, being roughly six/seven and four/five, stared at him with big round eyes. "Really, Uncle Bobby?"
He nodded, and grinned even wider.
"What happened?" I asked, totally unprepared for what he did next.
posted
Mack, I was thinking about this thread last night and a thought hit me.
I don't know anyone who more deserves to have the Easter Bunny visit you, making sure you sleep well, showing you a bit of magic.
I don't know anyone who more deserves to have some one care so much as to make you believe in the Easter Bunny, even if it is for only one day.
It is a shame that you did not get that as a child, but never doubt--you deserved it then and you deserve it now.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I could be wrong on this. I could be very wrong about it, but does your mother like your father? Has she ever lied about him? Would you put it past her to lie about this? Why was the bunny stamp in your garage and not the neighbor's?
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Surely your parents thought it was a good idea even if they didn't think of it. (it would be kind of scary if the neighbor snuck in and did it without their knowledge). I only have a couple of good memories of dad from my childhood, but I later made peace with my dad, and now I miss him sometimes. I went through a time when I couldn't like both my mom and my dad, but now I do.
I'm trying to remember the other day... before easter, my daughter was asking about something that worried her, and we were explaining it was fiction. Then she started asking about other things, and I was worried she was about to ask about Santa and the easter bunny. Even though I am ambivalent about it, my husband likes to maintain those traditions. We got past Harry Potter, the Hulk, and Spiderman before we shut it down.
It will be kind of fun someday to discuss that Papa Moose is real, though. My husband was confused... he didn't know that our Trogdor the Burninator is not THE Trogdor the Burninator.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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