The great battle of the Easter basket

By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer | Friday, April 14, 2006 9:55 PM PDT ∞

It's this time of year, when the baby birds begin to chirp and the flowers begin a-blooming, that I am reminded of one of the great battles of my childhood, when we four children ---- three boys and one lovely little girl, ahem, ahem ---- were forced to share an Easter basket.

I'm not an ingrate. I promise. And I don't blame my mother. She did the best she could raising four children, alone, and we never went without candy on Easter.

But after witnessing the many times when one child would attempt to poke out the other's eye with a pencil over a measly prize in the cereal box, I have to wonder what she was thinking when she decided to forgo the individual Easter baskets that year.

Was it the simplicity? Were the larger baskets on sale?

Did she want to teach us a powerful lesson about the downfalls of selfishness?

Sitting on the dining room table on that Easter morning was one gigantic basket that would have made Willy Wonka proud: sugary marshmallow Peeps of every color, jellybeans of course, and ---- read carefully ---- an odd number of hollow chocolate bunnies, among other delicacies.

As we looked around, the reaction was universal: "Where's yours?"

To those of you from only-child households, I will tell you that siblings are people who wouldn't think twice about setting each other afire or throwing each other down a flight of stairs over a Cadbury egg.

We were told: "Share."

Share? Candy? To most children, this first concept is always canceled out by the second: We can't share candy.

At first, we tried to be diplomatic, like politicians at peace talks.

We immediately formed trade agreements and compromised in our rumpled pajamas, our breaths sweetened with the aroma of Reese's peanut butter eggs. We shook hands over our respective divvied-up stockpiles of candy, with only transparent sticks-to-everything plastic green grass and icky black jellybeans remaining in the basket.

Evidently, while we were getting dressed for church, our treaty had become null and void. Mother had haphazardly piled everything back in the basket. (As my regular readers might recall, this is the same woman who had a habit of tossing untidy, out-of-place household items out the front door.)

"Share."

At that point, it was every man ---- and sugar-and-spice little girl ---- for himself.

Every time one would grab a piece of candy, another would try to one-up and grab two. A mouthful of marshmallow, chocolate, and jellybeans combined didn't stop one from biting the head off two bunnies to greedily claim: "I'm eating that, that one's mine. And that one."

Mother was nearly forced to trade in her pastel holiday attire for the black-and-white garb of a referee. There were fouls, time-outs and penalties galore.

We ate until our hearts content, or rather, to make sure we got our "fair share."

Bedtime was the ultimate showdown.

Who would be the last one to hit the pillow? For we guarded that basket that day as though it were an Olympic flame.

To our dismay, we were eventually herded to our beds and the Easter basket sat, vulnerable and still bulging with candy.

That is, until one of us would sneak out, crawl down the staircase and into the dining room to snag a midnight snack, once, twice, or 10 times. Who knew what would be remaining in the early morning light?

There were ambushes: "Aha! I caught you!" There were alliances: "I won't tell if you won't." There were standoffs: "You go back to bed first." And there was, of course, bluffing: "I was just looking for my penmanship book."

By sunrise, a trail of sticky green grass led to the bedrooms. Our stomachs were in knots from all the sugar, and our greedy hands were the same color as the Peeps.

So, did we learn anything here? Did we share anything?

Of course.

We shared bellyaches and we discovered that candy, while a tasty treat, are true weapons of mass ingestion.

Contact staff writer Louise Esola at lesola@nctimes.com.

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