Of eggs, urns and houses
When I was a little girl, one of my favourite days of the year was Easter,
not so much because I loved chocolate but because I loved finding the
pink-foil wrapped eggs.
I was a bit of an overachiever and so every year, it was my mission to find
more chocolate bunnies, peanut butter eggs and yellow marshmallow chicks than my younger brother. I knew all of my mother's - oops, I mean the Easter Bunny's, hiding spots. Every year, eggs were tucked into the piano bench. They lined our front-hall banister and were always set on top of our Robert Bateman prints. Every year, when we thought the hunt was done, my mother, acting on behalf of The Bunny, would tally the eggs in our baskets and realize that we were missing a few. Some years we found them, other years, months after Easter, my mother would suck them up when she was vacuuming under the couch cushions. By the time my brother and I were older, we'd become masters at finding our treats and so The Bunny had to be cunning about where to hide them. One Easter, when I was about 13 years old and my brother was nine, my mother announced that there were still a few goodies missing. We'd been to the usual places - the piano bench, the banister, the prints and to the new ones - inside the Lazy Susan, in my father's running shoes (gross) and in between my Lady Diana and Casa Loma souvenir spoons that hung on racks in our family room. I remember when my mother announced there were missing eggs, my brother and I both honed in on what seemed to be a new vase in our front hall. We both made a dash to it. Just as we were about to try and pull off its lid, my mother and father both yelped at us not to touch it. The vase was actually an urn, a resting place for our dog Max, our schnauzer who'd died recently. My father had set it down there the night before and had forgotten to move it. Finding the urn took the thrill out of hunting for more eggs but now, more than 15 years later, the story has become the stuff of Crosbie legend. It has been 10 years since I left my parent's house and called Kingston home and during that time, I have lived in one university residence and six apartments. All the moving has meant that I don't have any strong attachment to any of my homes. That's about to change. This time next year, I will be buying chocolate eggs to hide around my new house - a three-bedroom, four-level sidesplit with air-conditioning, hardwood floors, a newer roof and shingles, newer windows, ceramic tile in the front hall, a fireplace in the living room and a new kitchen. Not to mention a second bathroom.
Bring on the Robert Bateman prints.
not so much because I loved chocolate but because I loved finding the
pink-foil wrapped eggs.
I was a bit of an overachiever and so every year, it was my mission to find
more chocolate bunnies, peanut butter eggs and yellow marshmallow chicks than my younger brother. I knew all of my mother's - oops, I mean the Easter Bunny's, hiding spots. Every year, eggs were tucked into the piano bench. They lined our front-hall banister and were always set on top of our Robert Bateman prints. Every year, when we thought the hunt was done, my mother, acting on behalf of The Bunny, would tally the eggs in our baskets and realize that we were missing a few. Some years we found them, other years, months after Easter, my mother would suck them up when she was vacuuming under the couch cushions. By the time my brother and I were older, we'd become masters at finding our treats and so The Bunny had to be cunning about where to hide them. One Easter, when I was about 13 years old and my brother was nine, my mother announced that there were still a few goodies missing. We'd been to the usual places - the piano bench, the banister, the prints and to the new ones - inside the Lazy Susan, in my father's running shoes (gross) and in between my Lady Diana and Casa Loma souvenir spoons that hung on racks in our family room. I remember when my mother announced there were missing eggs, my brother and I both honed in on what seemed to be a new vase in our front hall. We both made a dash to it. Just as we were about to try and pull off its lid, my mother and father both yelped at us not to touch it. The vase was actually an urn, a resting place for our dog Max, our schnauzer who'd died recently. My father had set it down there the night before and had forgotten to move it. Finding the urn took the thrill out of hunting for more eggs but now, more than 15 years later, the story has become the stuff of Crosbie legend. It has been 10 years since I left my parent's house and called Kingston home and during that time, I have lived in one university residence and six apartments. All the moving has meant that I don't have any strong attachment to any of my homes. That's about to change. This time next year, I will be buying chocolate eggs to hide around my new house - a three-bedroom, four-level sidesplit with air-conditioning, hardwood floors, a newer roof and shingles, newer windows, ceramic tile in the front hall, a fireplace in the living room and a new kitchen. Not to mention a second bathroom.
Bring on the Robert Bateman prints.
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