Easter memories

     

Easter was as exciting as Valentine's Day, Christmas and Halloween when I was a child.

I remember the anticipation was so great I could barely go to sleep on Easter Eve.

And that is funny because I don't and didn't really like most of the candy. I liked the milk chocolate, but nothing covered in a coating, or anything like jelly beans, or marshmallows. We didn't even have plastic eggs then, so there was no refilling and re-hiding the eggs.

Still I couldn't wait to dye the eggs my dad boiled the night before and find the two baskets the Easter bunny hid for each of us the next morning. I would play for weeks with them, making nests for the jelly beans and Peeps, sorting and playing house with my candy until my siblings sneaked in and ate it all, or my mother put the baskets away.

We usually didn't go to church, but we often got new clothes and I loved that, even if I only wore them to my grandma's house for dinner. I remember one year I got a new hat, gloves, black patent leather purse and shoes with a tiny wedge heel. Another year I got a copper hued dress with copper patent leather shoes. We sang "In your Easter bonnet" and "Here comes Peter Cottontail." Sometimes we left the Bunny a carrot and he left us a note. We knew it was really him because of the giant tooth marks!

It was pretty much the same for my children except they got books as well as candy in their baskets and there were also plastic eggs they would refill and re-hide afterwards. Plus we all went to church before coming home and having hot cinnamon buns for breakfast.