Reflections on Easter’s long string of semi-successful art and baking projects

I’ll tell you one thing. I certainly won’t be making that Easter Bunny cake again.

I know everybody looked forward to the larger-than-life rabbit carefully constructed of lemon cake with coconut fur and jelly bean eyes. Well, it was partly covered with coconut but then some of the kids didn’t like coconut so one side had to be plain white frosting. The resulting creation looked sort of like he had mange. Life is tough in the bunny world.

I hate to admit it but I miss those old days, which is to say anything before February of last year. I started preparing months ahead of each holiday to make sure every detail was absolutely perfect and there was always a special cake.

The year the “Star Wars” movie came out, seized with interplanetary hubris, I made a Darth Vader cake instead of a bunny. Didn’t work out. The frosting ran and the cake was very droopy. One of the boys said it looked more like Darth Vader’s less successful twin brother, Darryl.

Each Easter, I boiled four dozen eggs for the egg dying ritual. One of my sons, now eligible for vaccine and Medicare, remembers:

“Mostly I remember not being too impressed with the aroma of the dyes, probably the vinegar. Decals (water transfer) on eggs made no sense to me. You put decals on airplanes, not eggs.”

“And how about those weird wax crayons,” his younger brother chimes in.

“The weird wax crayon was so you could write your name on the egg and the dye wouldn’t stick to it so your name would be on the egg,” Mom explains.

“In the whole history of the world, had that ever worked in an interesting or attractive way?” Son inquires.

Probably not. Sit down and eat your chocolate Easter bunny.

Big brother goes on:

“Dying eggs two different colors was mind blowing for a 6-year old. It’s not fair, you’re only supposed to dye one color. I never tumbled to dying it all one color, then half another, and plan ahead (not my forte) and dye half the egg a second color so the combined colors (also not my forte) is a good one (like blue and half yellow gives a blue and green egg with a perfect edge). I always dyed half one color, half another. They always had an untidy belt where the two colors overlapped no matter how carefully you held them.

“It was guaranteed at least one of your eggs would drop on something hard. Too bad, you only get your allotment of eggs, now one of yours has a flat spot on it and the dye will all soak in the break to turn your hard boiled egg an even more inedible color. However, the flat spot gave the egg a nice built-in stand so it wouldn’t roll away, so it wasn’t a complete loss.”

No surprise that boy turned out to be an engineer.

There was the Easter egg hunt, of course, for which we used plastic eggs after one disastrous hunt in which an egg went undiscovered in a teeny tiny suitcase in the hall closet until shortly before the 4th of July. It was very aromatic.

Then there were the Easter candies:

Older brother recalls, “I seem to remember single large chocolate bunnies showing up later. I think they were for younger children who were always treated better than the older children. (Younger children are the ones younger than you, no matter how young you were.)”

(Note from Mom) Younger children were NOT treated better. You just imagined that!

Big chocolate bunnies are always hollow, according to an article in The New York Times, which says that big solid bunnies would be too hard to eat and break teeth.

Of course, the day started with Mass. The most special moment came with Dad at one end of the row and Mom at the other. We’d turn to each other and smile over the children’s heads. It was Easter and we were all together.

It’s spring again. Our resident woodpecker is trying to attract lady woodpeckers by drumming another hole in his tree. Sometimes, he tries his luck on the metal No Parking sign in front of the house. I don’t know if that attracts any ladies, but it certainly gets my attention.

This year, for the second year in a row, I’ll be alone, like many others, and Easter is in danger of being just another day. Well, maybe not. We’re all getting our shots and soon we’ll be able to be Easter People again. Just not today.

Where to find Dorothy in April

• 9 a.m. April 5 and 19: Zoom Coffee Chat (and Change the World). A fast hour of guests, resources, ideas and fun.
• 2 p.m. April 8: The Zoom Book Doctors. Guest experts tell you how to bring your book from idea to launch.

Register for Zoom events at https://mygenerationgap.com. Questions? Contact Dorothy@mygenerationgap.com.

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Contact Dorothy at PO Box 881, DuPont, WA 98327, phone 800-548-9264 or Dorothy@itsnevertoolate.com

This story was originally published April 3, 2021 at 5:45 AM.