Easter Egg

This Easter our family traditions have suffered, probably because we spend all our energy taking care of our six month-old son. For instance, after church we usually hide painted Easter eggs for our dog to sniff out. Back in the pre-baby days, we might hide ten of these carefully painted eggs around the yard, but this year, we only had one. A single, yellow egg. It wasn’t much, but it would allow us to say that we’d kept the tradition going, even at our most sleep-deprived.

Our dog seemed to sense that it was a “down” Easter and didn’t want to be introduced to the egg. She had to be coaxed into participating. She eyed the egg rather dubiously. My wife had to crack the shell and give her a good sniff at the contents before our dog betrayed even the slightest excitement.

I was responsible for the actual hiding of the egg. I’d been doing baby things (feeding changing burping feeding) since early that morning and any remaining energy had been sapped by the minister’s trite and obvious sermon (the resurrection as a supernatural event? You mean rising from the dead isn’t a common thing? Wow!).

I staggered out into the blustery weather and put the egg between two rocks in the garden. There it sat, yellow and cheery, a little glowing orb, waiting for our dog to discover/devour it.

The dog took her time. Maybe it was a form of protest, I don’t know. She could see the egg, it was clearly visible, and during the course of our frantic exhortations the dog’s eye strayed over the egg several times, but she could not be moved to actually take it in her jaws and trot around so we could declare the hunt over and go back inside.

My son, however, was fascinated by that little spot of yellow. He reached out from my wife’s arms toward the ground, frowning in consternation at his inability to attract the egg into his clutches. He did not yet understand that his grasp was limited by the length of his arms. He was clearly confident that he only needed to keep wiggling his fingers and the egg would come.

All this time my wife and I were repeating, “Get the egg get the egg.”

Finally I bent down and offered the egg to the dog. She sniffed once, then backed up a step and looked at it askance. I shrugged and handed it to my wife, who bobbled it in her hand, trying to attract the dog’s attention.

Our son took this opportunity, from his perch in my wife’s lap, to snatch the egg with both hands and thrust it as far into his mouth as it would go. He gummed down, rolling his eyes wildly and crowing with infantile glee. Our dog suddenly whined and licked her chops. Trumped again by the baby! She didn’t know the baby liked eggs! Oh, if only she could do it all again, she’d eat that egg right away!

Much to the relief of the dog, our son was persuaded to exchange the egg for a teething ring. We peeled the egg and put into a bowl for the dog, who showed her gratitude by bolting it down in one prolonged swallow, like a python. And that was the Easter egg hunt, 2007.