letters to gma

Dec. 1, 2010

Dear Grandma & Grandpa ~

If I write you a story, will you write me one back? Not a make-believe story, but something from your real life that I haven't heard before? I just watched a video online that this woman put together of an interview with her grandmother AND I WANT TO DO ONE -- don't worry, I know you wouldn't like talking to a camera...but I so enjoyed reading [Great Aunt] M---'s autobiography.

[terrible sketch of a chick hatching from an egg] I only remember one Easter we didn't make it to your house to celebrate. It must have been 1987 or so, because we were still living in M---. You remember how M--- and I used to wake up in the early morning, and we were allowed to turn on the TV at low volume and watch cartoons. Well, that one Easter there must have been bad weather or I'm sure we'd have been in L---, and I woke up Easter morning all excited to go searching for eggs, but when I got out to the living room, M--- was just finishing up his own pre-dawn, solo egg-hunting expedition, and he'd already found all the eggs! Six-year-old me was ENRAGED that he'd started by himself, but four-year-old him was so proud of himself for all of his industrious gathering, and didn't understand that it was intended as a family activity for which the rest of us should also be awake. I'm sure I was on the verge of a tantrum over how had RUINED EASTER!!! but the parents calmly ascertained that he hadn't actually been eating the candy out of the eggs and redistributed them to their secret hiding places so the hunt could officially begin. They must have explained it to him, although I don't remember that. I do remember that I felt like I should have been mollified by the do-over, and that I mostly enjoyed the "re-hunt," but I still felt robbed that he'd gotten his own private egg hunt while I was cluelessly sleeping down the hall. OH, THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL! Sure, they were all the same eggs, none the less candy-filled than if they'd just been unpacked by the Easter Bunny himself (and, by the way, what kind of self-respecting rabbit totes around eggs, anyway, candy-filled or not? Mammals don't lay eggs (well, except for that goofy-looking duck-billed platypus, but he looks like a mutant anyway so we really shouldn't be surprised)), but that basketful of booty was TAINTED by the fact that I wasn't the first to unearth it. I was SO CONFLICTED about the situation: he hadn't meant to spoil it and the parents had immediately repaired the mistake, so I had to proceed as though nothing were wrong, but the egg hunt was no longer genuine but merely a fabrication and it's not fair and EASTER IS RUINED!!! I think my sense of social injustice is permanently marred by this event.

The funniest part, I think, is that I'm pretty sure I didn't even believe in the Easter Bunny at the time. I at one point cornered my poor mother and interrogated her about the existence of such nocturnal visitors -- Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny -- and we had a battle of logic on the subject. I demanded that she tell me the truth, because I'm not a little girl and lying is wrong! Finally she conceded and gave me the real story, on the condition that I wouldn't spoil it for my little brother. (I immediately snuck him off behind the dining room curtains and divested myself of the news. Obviously, he had a right to know, too! The kid was so little at the time that he probably never remembered believing in Santa Claus.) But if I knew the Easter Bunny was a ruse, then I also must have known the egg hunt was part of it, that Mom & Dad re-hiding the eggs was no different from hiding them the night before. It was obviously an over-inflated sense of social injustice making Miss [Snatch] ornery. So...nothing much has changed.

I'm SO EXCITED to see you in a couple of weeks and have hugs...and indoctrinate my beloved husband on the trimmings and traditions of a H---/A--- family Christmas.

All my love,
[Snatch]