The Real Deal With Easter

 

When I woke up on Easter morning this year was like any other morning for me.

Well, like any other morning for the past seven years. As a matter of fact the only difference was that my period decided to visit. It was still Sunday. I still made coffee and of course I logged onto Facebook to check things out while waking up.

I sat at my desk cursing mother nature but I also was celebrating and it wasn’t the resurrection of Jesus Christ either.

I may have been jolted awake by piercing cramps but that was so much better than the piercing voice of my now seventeen-year old son, begging to go hunt the eggs that the Easter bunny had left. I wasn’t hung over from chocolate gorging the night before while stuffing a basket with candy and toys. Or from the booze I used to drink while stuffing said basket. There was no dye on my kitchen table and their wouldn’t be any egg shells in sporadic places throughout my house later in the day when the brightly colored eggs were being eaten.

And praise Jesus – in true Easter fashion – there wouldn’t be a crap ton of hard-boiled eggs in my refrigerator for weeks to come.

Do I miss my little boy who got so excited that a bunny had left him presents to find all on his own? Yes. Do I miss the fun in decorating eggs and watching his eyes light up the first time he pulled one out of the colored water only to see a beautiful spectacle like nothing he’d ever seen before? Yup.

I’ll say it though because I know many parents are thinking it this morning.

Easter is messy. Easter is costly. Easter is essentially a sticky, gooey, hard-boiled hot mess. It’s a sugar high demon running rampant through your house at seven in the morning until late into the night.

It’s smelly farts for days to come. It’s staring in the refrigerator, holding up an egg with someone’s name on it, colors smudged beyond recognition, wondering if it’s still OK to eat a week later.

It’s all those little pieces of shredded green grass clogging up your vacuum cleaner for weeks and maybe even months if you’re like me and went overboard because this year the basket had to be bigger and better.

It’s pretending that you don’t know your kid is standing behind you with a cascarone and then acting surprised when you get bashed over the head with the damn thing. It’s picking all that bastard confetti out of your hair for the rest of the day.

It’s Ibuprofen for your cascarone headache, Pepto Bismol for the upset candy tummies and Gas-X for the war raging inside your guts from all that protein you shoved down your throat all day because “Ya’ll better eat all these eggs we boiled! All 486 of them damn it!”

You know what else Easter is? It’s memories. It’s sharing time together as a family even though your family has disappeared once the fun is over and it’s time to clean up.

It’s pretty dresses and little suits and pictures. TONS of pictures. (Unless of course you’re like my little man up there and have to hunt eggs all alone because that year you had chicken pox and couldn’t be around other kids.)

It’s watching your little ones passed out on the couch after the sugar has worn off, chocolate mustaches and sticky fingers.

I see all the pictures this Easter on Facebook as I sit here and drink my coffee and even though I’m  alone and am so damn happy that I’m not having to clean up the aftermath of Easter 2015, I’m secretly living vicariously through all the other mothers and fathers out there.

Easter is a hot sticky mess. A mess I kinda miss.

Kinda.

Happy Egg Day!