A Melted Rabbit

As I was fixing a small Easter basket for the lovely Madelyn Simone, the world’s most beautiful granddaughter, my thoughts drifted back half a century to the Easter baskets of my childhood. While there wasn’t nearly the hype of Christmas, we did have our family traditions. We always dyed the Easter eggs at the kitchen table, using a special set of cups for the eggs so the food coloring wouldn’t stain the good china. Before church on Easter morning, we’d scramble to find our baskets hidden so stealthily by the Easter Bunny himself, and then made sure to play a round or two of upper-upper before heading out the door.  

 When I googled “upper upper Easter eggs” there were no responses, which made me wonder – was that only a game someone in my family made up, or was there some kind of cultural significance to it? I did put the question out to my 1525 Facebook friends and family, and discovered it to be a Greek tradition, one that apparently made its way into my childhood home through my grandfather’s Philadelphia family. It’s an activity that involves a light tapping of the end of one hard-boiled egg by another, with the champion’s egg emerging unscathed.  I do recall a few tears shed when my gloriously dyed egg got smashed by my over-enthusiastic younger brother, while my sister confesses to leaving her egg in the dye a few extra minutes in the hope her eggshell would be strengthened for the battle.

In the early 60’s, one Easter Sunday dawned as a perfect spring day, and my parents decided to take my brother and I to the Buffalo Zoo after church. Enthralled with the chocolate rabbit in my Easter basket, I demanded to take it with me. Yes, I could take it, but no, I couldn’t promenade around the zoo swinging my basket – it had to stay in the car. By the time we’d exhausted our parents and returned to the parking lot, Peter Cottontail was a puddle of chocolate in its cellophane wrapper – and, because he had followed my lead, my brother’s chocolate was melted as well.

It’s remarkable how those moments of disappointment become etched in our memory for decades. It was a tough lesson for that little girl to swallow, particularly since I was the one who insisted that the basket of candy accompany us that warm spring afternoon. A generation later, we seldom took our sons to the zoo, and I wonder if that melted bunny set up that deprived childhood.

From the perspective of adulthood, I only wish that the distresses and devastations of life were as harmless as a melted chocolate rabbit or a cracked Easter egg. Life is difficult, and while Jesus taught that the Father “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45), some difficult circumstances come as a direct result of our actions, intentional or not. And while the Christian faith teaches forgiveness, that forgiveness does not eliminate the role of consequence in our lives.

Yet Christianity’s lessons, as well as the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, do extend the opportunity to make amends to those we’ve harmed. Apologies alone can be cheap if they don’t result in a change of our behavior, but making amends provides for restoration – directly or indirectly. The Hazeldon website describes it this way: “Sometimes people talk about "living" amends. This simply means that we live differently. Amends are about a genuine change in our behavior instead of the patchwork of an apology. We take on a whole new way of life. We stop accumulating fresh insults to our selves and others.”

Perhaps it’s not too late for me to make amends. We’re heading to my mother’s home for Easter, and I’m feeling prodded to stop at Sweeties or the Candy and Nut Shoppe to buy a chocolate rabbit for my brother. I’ll also courageously offer up my colored egg for destruction to all comers in the Upper Upper duel. But I’m drawing the line at taking the lovely Madelyn Simone to the zoo – at least by myself! A blessed Easter to you and yours.