I always looked fondly on Easter. I had an immense sweet tooth as a child and Easter meant satisfying the "chocolate beastie" (anyone remember that Bar-None commercial?) Anyway, one year when I was like nine or ten...(I may have been older but to retain my diginity, lets go with nine or ten) I put on lofty airs and when my grandmother(with whom I stayed on the weekends) reminded me that Easter was near I shrugged it off and said I was too old for baskets and candy.
Well Easter Sunday arrived a few weeks later and I must have forgotten what I said before because I came downstairs fully expecting to see an easter basket exploding with candy on the dining table. There was none. Curiously, I thought that my grandmother was playing games with me, "She must have hidden it from me " I thought, "She's trying to make me work for it, well that's fine I will find it sooner or later". At first I coolly searched in all the obvious parental hiding spots: closets, under the bed, the pantry......all turned up nothing. I was beginning to get a little frantic. "What the fuck?" She must have hidden it somewhere right? After all, its Easter for God's sake!!
Worried about the look of panic on my face, my grandmother asked what was wrong. "What's wrong?" "How could she not know?" "What's wrong is that I can't find the damn goods", I thought. " Alright I give up......where's the candy hidden?" She looked at me like I was some bum asking for money. "You said you were too old for candy this year so I didn't get you any". Suddenly I felt like I was watching my house burn down. "No candy!?.""I said what!!? And you listened?" I am just a kid for christ sake, don't you know we're supposed to be seen not heard!?" "Whoever lisens to kids? Of all the times to listen......now!!? I thought of all of my friends growing sick from stuffing their fat faces and coming to school on Monday bragging about their loot like a pirate brags about buried treasure. When it would come time, @ lunch , to compare notes on who got what and how much....I would be silent..I would get made fun of, teachers would look a me like I was the kid whose parents didn't love him, who let him come to school in dirty clothes with no lunch!........Oh the humiliation!!! I wasn't ready to grow up yet, cast out into the cold pitiless world like Oliver Twist, no candy, she might as well have taken me to the mall and abandoned me in the parking lot........I suddenly felt all alone....Then I apparently hit the roof.
I stopped talking, all through church I sulked quietly in the back..ignoring everyone and generally acting bratty....(we've all been there, the silent treatment coupled with brattiness can be a most effective tool at that age....its all we as children have or had, this was before the whole prozac, ritalin craze...) Anyway, on the way back we stopped at Rite Aid to pick up some things and I stayed in the car. I looked around the parking lot and thought to myself that this as good a parking lot as any to start my new life as an urchin. W but when my Grandmother came out she had two large bags. After getting back into her green Maverick, named Betsy, she reached into one of the bags and withdrew ...........a Basket!!!! An Overflowing delicous looking pot of chocolate gold teeming with Peeps! Gold foiled chocolate coins!, the hollow chocolate bunny with the edible button eyes!, Cadbury Creme eggs, and my favorite........Egg shaped Reeses Peanut Butter cups!!!!!!! Wow, talk about the fatted calf.....I wept with joy. "Iam loved." "I wonlt be taken to a mall parking lot and abandoned" I would enter school on Monday, not as some poor sucker but...an equal! ......Later @ home, laying in a sugar induced chocolate peanut butter cup coma on the floor, surronded by empty wrappers and half a hollow bunny, my grandmother stood over me and with a chuckle said "Boy, I am going to get you a basket every year until I'm dead!" We both laughed, but like Scrooge on Christmas Day she was as good as her word. She died almost seven years ago and I still get a basket!!! Its one of those thing I don't question like the person who leaves the rose on Poe's grave every year. I could Inquire but where would be the fun in that? Now,when Iam decapitating that chocolate bunny, I always remember how my grandma saved the day so many years ago. Happy Easter everyone, and Grandma, I will be eating a Peanut butter Egg and thinking of you......love..........mike