#54 A Resurrection of Traditions

When I was a kid, Easter was my favorite holiday. My mom would painstakingly decorate our house with vibrant hanging eggs, cute little rabbits, & vases of plastic lilies. Her fabulous mod decorations haven't changed since the 1970s and I love that about her. Attractive pastel baskets full of peeps, Cadbury eggs, & trinkets would await my two younger brothers and me when we woke up, and it was the one day we could eat candy before breakfast. We would situate ourselves at the dining room table, the pungent smell of vinegar in the air, as we'd fight over who would get to drop those little colored tablets into the coffee cups. All of us were eager to see whose hard-boiled eggs would have the most striking dye job! Occasionally we'd even attempt the shrink wrap strategy, but that usually ended with burned fingertips, cracked shells, & tears.

While my mom toiled away in the kitchen preparing our Easter dinner, my dad would drive down to Best Buy and rent us a VCR, then we'd gather around the 14-inch television as a family, entertaining ourselves with VHS movies like Labyrinth, The Goonies, & Indiana Jones- while snacking on deviled eggs. After lunch, my parents would hide colorful plastic eggs filled with jelly beans, coins, & malted milk balls for us to uncover. They could be quite stealthy when concealing their booty, and there were times when a rogue egg wouldn't be retrieved. Years later we'd come across the faded relic and open it up to find that slugs had taken up residency next to Abe Lincoln. 

Now that I'm a childless adult, and won't be passing any of these fond traditions on, I've tried to sort of develop my own grown-up version of the holiday. This year will be weird because not only am I a childless adult, hours from my immediate family, but we're also under a "shelter in" directive, so we couldn't go anywhere even if we wanted to... I've had to get extra creative. I'm still going to cook a meal, but it will be a modest dinner for two, spent staring into the eyes of our beautiful drummer. I've filled some eggs that I plan to secretly hide in Lenny Renegade's back yard so he and Mary Mayhem can have a little giggle as they uncover them. And Hot Pink Hangover is going to be hosting a special Easter egg hunt on our socials, so be sure to check in on us and join the fun. ;-)

I'm going to make some deviled eggs, but as far as dying them goes, I forgot to buy the coloring kit, so we'll have to either scrap that idea or try using acrylic paint and hope for the best... I'm not sure that my mom would be too impressed with how I'm carrying on her tradition, but one thing that will persist is that I'm going to eat a basket full of peeps while watching Labyrinth, and hope that Danny Rampage won't be too judgy to join me in my holiday fun. Happy Easter, everyone.