As a child Easter, I am lucky my parents instilled within me and my sisters the true meaning of Easter. It was not until I reached junior high when I discovered there was some backstory involving a human-sized bunny who delivered colored eggs and candy. Don't get me wrong, we weren't completely out of the loop on egg hunts, Easter baskets and new threads for church. We got all those cool Easter things. However, there weren't any trips to the mall to sit on a bunny's lap, telling what color eggs we wanted, if that in fact is the protocol. Nor did we wake Easter morning to discover presents from said Easter bunny. Years later, hearing friends' childhood tales of the Easter bunny blew my mind. Blew it! "Easter bunny....presents....photo ops at the mall..." Those tales of merriment made me think my sisters and I got a bum deal at home. Were the parental units holding out on us? Did dad simply not want to put on the Bunny costume and hop around the backyard planting eggs?
Nah.
Today, I am very thankful to my parents for establishing the true meaning of Easter for my sisters and I, even if it meant singing "Sister Mary she came runnin' and searching for her Lord..."; listening to my little sisters and youth Sunday schoolers deliver their Easter speeches; and spending a good part of our Easter Sundays sitting in church hour after hour. (If you've been to a Black church, you fully understand this.)
Yesterday, we did not do anything Easter bunny-ish with our daughter. Right now she's probably hearing about the Easter bunny from her daycare friends. Damn. I'll bet she's really pissed. Thirty years from now she'll thank me. Until then, I'd better grab a gift or something on the way home from work and tell her it's something I found at the office that Santa must've left hidden until now. Man, can I parent or what?
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