I don't really do Easter anymore. Maybe some day I will again, but for now I view this day as a day for kids (I don't have any), a day for the religious (I'm not), and a day for loving families to get together and spend a glorious spring day showering each other with sunshine and love (and let's be honest, my family DOES NOT come even remotely close to being this kind of family). Plus, I hate pastels. And I can't eat eggs.
Once upon a time, Easter was sort of a big deal. My family would head to Long Island, where my grandmother would drag everyone to church, all done up in our new Easter hats and dresses. My cousins would be there, which was always exciting. We'd struggle through the service, all the while knowing that when we returned back to grandma's there would be Easter baskets and candy waiting for us, because THE EASTER BUNNY HAD COME!
The Easter bunny always came to my grandmother's house during church. Interestingly enough, my uncle always left church earlier than the rest of us. My tiny little cynical brain may have been suspicious of this, but it wasn't until years later that I finally made the connection. At any rate, we would always linger after the service and converse with people I didn't know. There was probably a lot of cheek pinching and many comments like, "Oh, look how much you girls have grown," or "Oh, look at that blonde hair." All the while, we were probably secretly dying inside, eager to leave so we could hunt for our Easter goodies. But, like the good little girls that we were, we stood patiently and politely and hid behind our mother whenever someone came at us with cheek pinching fingers.
Hunting for the goodies the Easter bunny left behind was always exciting, however, it always amazed me at how uncreative and predictable the Easter bunny was. I mean, that sonofabitch hid my Easter basket up in the same tree EVERY YEAR*! And he always hid it so high up I couldn't reach it. I thought it was unfair that out of all the grand kids, I was the only one who couldn't retrieve my own basket from it's hiding spot. That job always fell to my only male cousin, who didn't have to wear an Easter dress and pretty patent leather shoes and could easily scale up a tree.
When my grandmother sold her house** and moved to the mountains with us, Easter was never the same. For one, it was still snowing in the mountains at Easter time, and apparently the Easter bunny had issues with snow because he always hid our goodies indoors. I don't recall going to church in the mountains, but if my grandmother was with us, I'm sure that we did. Oh, and our Easter outfits weren't nearly as sweet and pretty as they were on Long Island. Fortunately for everyone, I don't have pictures with me or I would totally bust them out and do a side-by-side comparison. You're welcome.
Any way, if you're into such a thing... Happy Easter!
(This isn't an Easter picture, but it's the only one I could find that demonstrates the cuteness and level of pinchableness that our chubby little cheeks had. We were such adorable little dorks.)
* I do recall one year when the Easter bunny hid my basket somewhere else (I think my uncle and cousins were MIA that year), and I was devastated! I remember crying in big, gasping, hiccuping sobs, "but... he hides... my basket... there... every year." That's probably the year I stopped believing in the Easter bunny and became a holiday-hating cynic.
** which was quite devastating for me. I wasn't so naive that I thought good things couldn't come to an end (my parents divorced when was 6 or 7, so they had already ruined the fairytale, happy-ever-after fantasy for me), but I thought Grandma's house was FOREVER! I have a pretty clear memory of wandering through her house once, kissing the walls goodbye of each and every room.
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