Excerpt from “Someday We’ll Laugh About This”:
This year, I thought, Easter is going to be different. Organized. On time. Preparations finished before the Easter Bunny takes his first hop.
EASTER MINUS TWO WEEKS: We begin practicing some special choral music for church. Lisa has new shoes; I buy a pair for Mollie and put them out of reach so they’ll stay white.
EASTER MINUS ONE WEEK: I pick out beautiful outfits for the girls. Choral rehearsals continue.
ESTER MINUS THREE DAYS: I go shopping for a few accessories for the girls and me. The store has no tights in either girl’s size. I improvise, buying Lisa her first panty hose and Molly white anklets, for which I buy some rainbow ruffles to jazz them up. I find purses to match each one’s shoes. I buy two Easter baskets. Both are purple but one has a gold handle, to distinguish them. The girls fight over the one that’s all purple. Drawing straws, Mollie wins it. Lisa sulks.
EASTER MINUS TWO DAYS: I put new buttons on Lisa’s dress.
EASTER MINUS ONE DAY: We take the girls to their first-ever Easter egg hunt. Very interesting. A whirlwind of guess-how-many-jelly-beans-in-the-jars, decorating egg-hunting bags, scrambling for plastic eggs filled with chocolate surprises and stickers, and decorating cupcakes. Mollie guesses two jelly beans in the jar, and no amount of prompting will budge her to think of a higher number, any higher number.
Back home again, we perform the annual egg dyeing ritual. I boil a dozen eggs. One has a crack and the contents boil out all over the other eggs in disgusting shapes. As we dye them, most of the remaining eggs get cracked, but Mollie puts so many stickers on each one that Ray says they have new shells. Lisa and I put together the “train” that came with the egg dyeing kit; it takes all our skill and patience. Kids are supposed to do this themselves? I put the eggs in the refrigerator.
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