Dee Dee with the Easter Bunny

(click to enlarge)


We believed in the magical make-believe trinity in our house in Erie, PA when I was very little - Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. I wasn’t disappointed as a child to learn that the Easter Bunny wasn’t real. I liked the character and the story, but the idea was too fantastical to maintain even as a child.

(Santa is different; he embodies many of the same characteristics shared by personalities we believe in even as adults, including saints, patriarchs, and deities.)

I do remember as a very young child. waking up in the middle of the night in Erie, many hours before Easter sunrise, going downstairs to the bathroom, and hearing something in the kitchen. The lights were off, and I didn't go into the kitchen, I just listened around the corner. Whatever it was, it stopped. Believing firmly it was the Easter Bunny, and not wanting to frighten him off, I used the bathroom, went back upstairs and back to sleep.

Was it Mom and Dad? Possibly. Maybe Dad getting a snack from the fridge and not wanting to stop me from returning to bed.

There is, however, something disconcerting in Easter secular mythology. Christmas has been able to maintain a long and amicable secular and sacred split fairly well (though to what extent and how much longer that can be maintained, I'm skeptical), but Easter is different. The large costumed Easter Bunny with empty eyes in the mall where Santa is supposed to sit is a little sinister, and for a religiously inclined person, it's uncomfortable.

But Dee Dee and Jing liked it, so it can’t be all bad.

One more thing...

We wondered why Dee Dee kept running in and out of our bedroom. She was admiring herself in the full-length mirror while she applied magic marker lipstick. Fortunately, these were Crayola markers and washed off.

 

Started: 2012-04-05