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| Photo credit: Photo by so_phee_ah on Flickr |
As parents carved paths through the crowd to shove their eager children closer to the front, I recalled the true meaning and purpose of Easter egg hunts: to the most rapacious and aggressive go the spoils.
All my life I have been, or tried my damnedest to be, the kid with the most Easter eggs. And what that brought was an inability to listen to my own body and soul, and the desire for more and yet more brightly colored eggs in my basket. So it was that my children (I'm embarrassed to say) once had one of their I-won-No-I-won-No-I won fights interrupted by a screaming rant from me about how bad competition is and how I would not tolerate it in my house.
It became clear before the hunt started that my children were unlikely to come away with full baskets. It became still more clear as soon as the hunt began, when all rules were abandoned and chaos ensued, that my children were going to come away with entirely empty baskets. And that fiercely competitive child still inside me seethed. We walked through the roiling field together, all the grass picked clean of eggs by the time we reached it. Two empty baskets.
We walked off the field past a girl dressed in her Easter best, frilly white with lavender ribbons. She stood red faced, tears carving silent white tracks down her cheeks. Her basket held a single egg. Most of the children filed of the field in dejection, but a few sat on the grass surrounded by pastel bounty, counting their eggs.
"I'm sorry you guys didn't get any eggs," I said.
"Oh, well," said my son, "Can we go to the park now?"
Yes, yes, yes!
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