Happy Easter

Whether or not one is a celebrator of Easter, I like to think the candy eggs and chocolate bunnies are things that can be enjoyed by all.

These sugar eggs came from Target, but one year when I was a kid my cousins and I made our own, with elaborate pastorals inside each sugar eggshell: a little yellow duck floating in a turquoise frosting lake, a big-eyed fawn poised at the edge of an icing meadow, etc.

When the holiday was over I got to bring my egg back home to Chicago where I played with it for many days, peering through the peephole and fervidly imagining the candyland where my little yellow duck lived. Eventually though, I lost my restraint, and nibbled off the dried-out pieces of frosting that decorated the outer shell. When they were gone I started chipping off chunks of the egg itself, gnawing at the pure sugar as I exposed the enclosed duck-pond world to the startling vastness of my bedroom, and finally polishing it off so there was nothing left but the inedible ceramic duck.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure the egg was intended to be eaten, either. But it was made of sugar, and I was seven years old: the outcome was inevitable.