And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.
Easter kind of slipped by me this year. I knew it was late, and I was so caught up in my trip to Louisiana, I just kept it in the “late” file in my mind. All of a sudden, it was Friday night, and Easter was in two days, and how the hell did that happen?
My husband slipped out of the house on Saturday and bought Easter candy for our youngest child (who is 21), and eggs and egg dye. We asked everyone about the possibility of a dinner, but one son was going to be at his in-laws’ home, the other worked until eight Sunday night, my oldest daughter lives in Louisiana, and the youngest, who we bought the eggs, dye and candy for, was working at her job on her college campus until noon, and then would likely take a nap because she was up so early. On Saturday, she returned to campus right after dinner so she wouldn’t have to get up early at home and drive in.
So the eggs stayed in the fridge. I put the dye into the cupboard for next year. We didn’t plan a dinner at all, but figured Sunday was just going to be a Sunday.
Late afternoon on Easter, Olivia texted. “Are we doing anything?” she asked.
I was flabbergasted. It was 4:00. “We’re not doing anything special for dinner,” I said.
“Oh.”
It’s amazing how two letters can look so sad on a phone screen.
“You could dye eggs,” I said. “We have the eggs. We have the dye.”
“Yee!” she texted in her generation’s weird way of saying yes. “I’m getting ready to come home.”
And so, after a thrown-together dinner, my daughter dyed Easter eggs at 8:00 on Easter evening. My 36-year old son came over and dyed them with her. I listened to their laughter.
For some reason, the dye worked its way through the shell and, after peeling, the eggs sported bright jewel tones all over their white bodies. All week, as I’ve taken two from the fridge and made egg salad for my lunch, I’ve smiled at the rainbow colors shining up through the yellow of mayo and mustard.
The jewel tones reminded me of another Easter egg, a long, long time ago. When my family lived in northern Minnesota, we went to church sometimes in a small church in Carlton. Afterwards, we would go to a late breakfast/early lunch at a little family restaurant. The name that sticks with me is Stuckenbergs, but I could be wrong. I was seven years old, I believe, when we stopped there after Easter mass. I remember it, because the waitress gave me an Easter egg.
Now, we had Easter eggs at home. We’d dyed them and hidden them and found them. But this egg was different. It was really big. It was the color of the sky during the summer I was impatiently waiting for. The shell felt very thick, which is why I asked the waitress if it was real, and she confirmed that it was. I cradled it in both hands as we drove home, and then, instead of putting it in the refrigerator in a basket with the rest of the eggs, I put it into the jewelry box on my dresser. It was my special box, that held anything but jewelry. Instead, it held treasures that I’d found. The box played music and there was a ballerina that twirled. I didn’t call her that though; she was a goddess who watched over my treasures.
This egg was a treasure. It was a gem. It was so, so pretty.
I didn’t tell anyone it was in my treasure box.
Months passed. The spring of Easter moved into the summer I longed for, and then fall. From time to time, I played with that egg in my own way, the way I had with most of my playthings. I’d get it out of the treasure box and place it carefully on my dresser, where I could see it with my eyes and where I could see it in the mirror’s reflection. Then I’d plant my elbows beside it, rest my chin in my hands, and go to impossible places with that egg. Sometimes it hatched marvelous things. Dragons. Fireflies. Magical people. Sometimes even a chicken, but it was never an ordinary chicken. Other times, it wasn’t an egg at all, but an enormous jewel in a crown, or a planet in the sky, a doorknob that opened a door into a secret room.
When I was done with my play, I would sigh, cradle the egg carefully in my two hands, admire its color which never faded, and then put it back into my treasure box.
For months.
It was somewhere around Halloween when I took the egg out to play and discovered there was a crack.
Oh, no.
Carefully holding it in one hand, I brought it out to the kitchen, where I rummaged through the junk drawer, looking for glue. My mother asked what I was doing. “My egg has a crack,” I said. “I need to fix it.”
I can still hear her shriek when she realized what I had. What I still had.
“You can’t glue it!” she said. “It’s broken and it’s rotten and it’s going to stink! We have to throw it away!”
I quickly hid the egg behind my back. In the garbage? My egg?
Ducking outside, I found my mother’s little shovel that she used for working with her plants. I walked to the creek that ran through all the neighborhood yards, because I knew the ground was softer there. Kneeling, I buried my egg. Patting the dirt all around and over it, I’m pretty sure I managed to do it without it cracking further. My egg would never stink. My egg was not rotten.
This week, smiling down at the rainbow colors in my egg salad, the Easter eggs made late after a forgotten Easter, I found a memory.
Magical.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.

