Easter Weekend

My parents separated when I was a young child and all my childhood memories are filled with every other weekend and summers with my father. My holidays were also split between my parents. My mother always had Christmas morning, my father received Christmas afternoon and my father also had Easter. My father had me the entire Easter weekend, which was usually a four day event.

Easter at my Father’s place was an great but the credit probably belongs to my step-mother (SM). Easter weekend would start with Egg Decorating on Saturday night. My SM would buy the craziest non-traditional stuff to decorate our eggs with. We would decorate eggs as a family, the parents and the children. Sometime during the night the Easter bunny would visit and the bunny would hide all the eggs and our baskets. We would wake up and try to find our baskets. The Easter bunny even brought a basket for my father. We would play, hot and cold if it was too hard to find, and sometimes we needed the help. Then we would venture into the yard and find the eggs. The Easter bunny had rules and she had to hide the eggs in “plain sight”. Plain sight could mean you had to be on your tummy in order to see the egg or you had to be on a ten foot ladder before you could see it, but not buried or hidden in anything.

As I grew older and left my parents home I would still have Easter morning at my fathers. My SM would even get a basket for the significant other in my life at the time. I also started putting my own twist onto Easter. Easter eve I would host a huge bash, complete with a whole array of egg decorating paraphernalia. My guests would bring eggs and over alcohol we would decorate eggs and have an egg decorating contest. I hosted parties where at least 100 eggs were decorated.

These parties were co-ed and so along with the decorating a huge poker game would also commence. Sometime during the night a few of the drunken party goers (usually the men) would hide the eggs. In the morning the women (who spent the night) would go out into the yard and find the eggs. We would have a competition on who could find the most eggs, the same “plain sight” rules held when hiding the eggs.

I didn’t even realize Easter was coming this year until I started getting phone calls from friends informing they would be at the bash this year. However, this year is the first year that I am not going to have an Easter bash and I am bummed! I am moving in 11 days. I won’t be able to host the traditional Easter fling. I won’t be able to get up Easter morning and hunt for eggs this year. I also won’t be getting an Easter basket for the first time in my memory and I am feeling very sorry for myself. I did purchase decorating stuff and will decorate eggs alone on Sunday. I hope this is not the end of Easter for me.