The Easter Egg Hunt

I have some vivid memories of Easter Sundays on the farm.   I remember the dress that I wore one year at the age of 5 to my Uncle Vic’s house, I remember the corsages that my Dad bought my sister and I every year, I remember the 100 egg omolet that I helped stir at Grandpa’s house.   But one memory that sticks out for me is from one particular Easter morning hunt at the farm.

Every Easter morning all of my siblings and I would wake up early (usually before the crack of dawn) and search the house for those Easter goodies that my folks hid.   One particular year, when I was a pre-teen, I remember how we scoured through the house with no results.  We lived in a large farm house, and there were lots of places to hide these magical goodies, but we usually didn’t have any trouble uncovering the secret hiding places.  But not this year.  We searched, and we looked, and we hunted…no luck.

The five of us gathered in the kitchen not quite sure what to make of it.  Did they skip it this year?  Did they forget?  Did they think we were getting too old for this kind of fun?  My brother sat down at the table to think.  Next thing we knew, he shouted, “I found it!”   Sitting right on top of the vinyl multi-textured table cloth were five little rings with each of our initials in them.  How cool was this?

I loved wearing that little ring with the adjustable band.  But, unfortunately, I didn’t get to wear it for long.  Later that week, I was playing out in the yard on a warm afternoon.  I grabbed the top rail of the wood corral to jump over the fence and catch up with my brother who was looking for a lost baseball in the pen behind the cattle chute.  As soon as I grabbed the rail, the adjustable edge of my little ring caught on something and went flying.  Oh No!!  I couldn’t believe that had just happened.  I didn’t see which way it went.  I didn’t know where to start looking.  I’m pretty sure that it went into the corral, which unfortunately currently housed a bull that I was none too excited to hang out with.  With the recent spring weather, the corral was also muddy and uneven, not the best territory to treasure hunt in.

I eye balled the ground from the top of the fence.  My brother looked around a little for me in the corral (thanks for that bro!), but since we didn’t know which direction it flew, it was an impossible task.  I looked in the cattle chute, in case it had flown behind me, I looked on the cement ground below me, in case it had simply fallen.  No luck.  It was gone.   I was devastated.

For years, whenever I went into this area, I found myself surveying the ground…you know…just in case.  To this day, my favorite pieces of jewelry are still rings.  I’m sure this was the beginning of it for me.  Someday, I will have to acquire a ring with my initial on it to replace this wonderful Easter gift from my folks.  Yes, Easter means more to me than this superficial story might suggest, but so do the precious memories of growing up on the farm and the love of my family. This story, to me, is the story of those irreplaceable memories of the love of my family.

What was your favorite Easter Egg hunt?