EASTER EGG SUNDAY

I must truly confess that I sorely miss the near-sacred tradition of gorging myself on candy purloined from the Easter baskets of unsuspecting small children—usually ones own children, of course. Sweets obtained any other way on this day are never quite as soul-satisfying or as free from the ordinary guilt associated with gluttony. I take some bitter comfort from an obvious loss of stealth and dexterity in this maneuver over time, and in the fact that my children are old enough now to not only protect their trove from me, but are fully capable of stealing their own—from their own, so to speak.

I admit that in times past they have occasionally gotten wise to me, so over the years I have traded rather heavily on the passage from Luke that asks, “Which of you fathers, when his son asks for an egg, would give him a scorpion?”. This has left me with some assurance that I will be nipped by no scorpions in the course of secret retrievals—or even from behind innocent faces of mock-generosity.

These days it is a different time and place, and little kids here at the beach are different too, somehow. I won’t say they are stingy exactly, but they prove to be remarkably wary and amazingly quick in their protective actions. That being the case, and it being Easter Sunday, our dear Lord risen and all, I have fallen back on more honest means of procuring those eggs--but they never taste quite as good.