Easter Bunny

Let them eat Bunny Cake

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‘An Easter treat that’s hard to beat’

I just realized that I really should have posted this story before Easter. That way you all could have whipped out your cake pans and created a bunny to dig into after your ham or lamb. (Note: we never had lamb at Easter; my mother swears it smells like “hot wet sweaters.”)

Speaking of sweaters, here’s my latest. I haven’t gotten it hot or wet, so I don’t know if it smells like lamb

Oh well, you still could “do” a bunny cake. They’re awfully fun to make, and, what with the coconut frosting and the jellybean whiskers, tasty too.

Besides, bunnies don’t really have anything to do with Easter. Not really. Bunnies and eggs were pagan fertility symbols that the early Christians appropriated; they decided they were symbols of the resurrection of Jesus. Though I have a suspicion that the real reason for “stealing” those heathen bunnies and eggs was to cheer up an inherently downer holiday. (Crown of thorns? Dying on a cross? I mean, even rising from the dead isn’t exactly cheerful.)

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“What’s that smell?”

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‘There’s something rotten in the State of Illinois’

It rained this Easter. Which wasn’t really a problem, not for me anyway, since I don’t have any little kids to take on an Easter Egg Hunt. (More’s the pity.)

But I remember very well, being the Oldest Kid and all, what happened one time when it rained on our, er, Easter Parade.

But first, a word about Easter.

My family was Lutheran. Which is sort of like being Catholic, but stripped-down and rather basic — kind of like the black-wall tire of religions, or like being the Catholic B-Team. We were jealous of our cousins who were Catholic and enjoyed the full-on religious package; they got to have First Communion and wear fancy dresses and patent leather mary janes and hats with (gasp) veils and get sprinkled with Holy Water. They even got to kneel. (When you’re seven, you think kneeling is incredibly cool.)

I remember that purse. I loved that purse; I distinctly remember putting my collection envelope in there — and (gasp) am I wearing a hat?

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“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes”

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‘Unless, of course, they come with a chocolate bunny’

That quote up top is from Thoreau. I don’t know much about little Henry David’s family or what they did for Easter, but I’m thinking he may have felt a tad better about new-clothes-requiring occasions if he’d had a nice mommy who sewed him a sport coat. Not to mention a Bunny to leave him an Easter basket.

Younger Brothers Scott and Roger and I show off our Easter finery, which was most likely made by our mother. No, that’s not the Easter Bunny. That’s Sandy, the Dog of Our Youth

Last weekend was Easter. It was also my Youngest Brother Doug’s birthday. Since he is waaaay younger than me, and I wasn’t around for many of his Easters, I don’t have a photo of him lined up with the rest of us wearing Easter duds. But I do have this shot of him in his (almost) birthday suit. Continue reading