An Easter Story

Back when I was coming up, we didn't have spring break in our schools. We had Easter holidays. We were off the whole week before Easter. I didn't even know what spring break was until I got to college.

Every year, my aunt and uncle, and my four cousins from Alabama would come visit us at Christmas. Every year, my parents, and us four kids from Texas would go visit them at Easter. We always came home before Easter, though.

One year, my grandparents decided that they were going to go, too. Now, when my parents drove, we went about half way then stopped and spent the night. My grandparents drove straight through. It was only a 10 hour drive, but my mother couldn't stand being in the car with us for that long. Well, that year that my grandparents went, it was decided that my brother and I were old enough to go with them. I was 8 or 9, and Rus was 10 or 11.

So we did. My parents and younger siblings came later. They also left before we did. I think they left on Thursday, and Grandma, Grandpa, Rus, and I stayed through Easter Sunday. Our mother told us that our Easter baskets would be waiting for us when we got home.

That Saturday, the day before Easter, my Aunt Shirley called Rus and me into the kitchen with her. She had something to tell us. Our mother had sent some candy with us to Alabama (which we didn't know), but Aunt Shirley had forgotten to get it out of the back of her car where she had hidden it. She had called us in there to tell us our candy had melted. Once she reassured us that we could still eat it, it just didn't look like a rabbit any more, it was all OK.

That Sunday morning, there amidst our cousins' baskets, with their lovely dyed eggs, jelly beans, and chocolate bunnies, were our two misshapen blobs with their little candy eyes staring up at us.

But you know, of all the Easter bunnies I've had throughout my life. Those are the ones I remember.

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