Easter Egg Hunts, Claps of Thunder and Natural Depravity

Please don’t faint, but I’ve actually got a post for you today which I wrote for this site. No clicking over to somewhere else. Original content, I believe it’s called. I know. Shhh. Ocking. I’d like to get back into the habit of writing here more often. Maybe this is a start. I kinda like this one, but I wrote it in a stream-of-consciousness blur, so it’s a bit random. Still, a worthy effort, I believe, on this Good Friday. Here it be:

Ironic, I thought, as we drove to the Easter Egg Hunt. The rain, I meant. Only it wasn’t ironic, well, except for maybe in an Alanis Morissette kind of way, like ray- eee -ain, on your wedding day, which, incidentally, isn’t ironic at all. Bad luck to be certain. But ironic, it is not. I confuse irony more than I’d like to admit, and I blame yesteryear’s bitter songstress for said confusion, too lovesick, I suppose, to fully understand the term, that angry woman was. Still, she, she, she oughtta know.

Yet, I’m off track. Regrouping now…

So. It had been beautiful all weekend, right up to the highly anticipated event. Yet just minutes before multitudes of pint-sized basket-toters were to comb the churchyard for various confectionary delights, the heavens opened up.

You don’t have as many kids as Caroline and I have without learning the merits of “muscling through” many a thing. Shitty weather being chief among them. So when we arrived at the church to a Noah-and-the-Ark type downpour, I wasn’t too fazed. And neither were the triplets. They’d brave a lot worse than rain to fill their basket with tooth-rotting treats.

Besides, as we, along with the others, gathered inside the gym and peered through its glass doors, the rain looked as if it’d soon pass. Shortly thereafter, it did just that. That’s when we got word to line up outside for the hunt which would begin any minute. But no sooner had the children lined up than the rain came again, this time with an attitude as evidenced by its loud cracks of thunder.

My kids (and most of the others) still didn’t care. Nor would they have cared if they’d seen bolts of lightning zigzagging from the sky. The same ones that send them into DEFCON 1 meltdowns if experienced in the safety of our comfortable home. No. They’d comb every inch of a roach-infested crack house if marshmallows were part of the deal.

But, to their disappointment, the adults did care. Thus, the hunt was delayed and inside the gym we returned. It was then that Caroline and I decided to pull the plug. But just as we were making our way to the car, the rain not only stopped, but the skies had suddenly become blue as well. The storm had passed. This time for good.

So outward we went where the kids stood in line yet again. The wide smiles of the triplets’, a dead giveaway of the pride they felt at having graduated from the ranks of toddlerhood, as they were ushered away from such dependents to the part of the yard where the big kids would hunt.

But a funny thing happened when the hunt finally began. There were no eggs. At least not very many. It appeared as if some of the bigger kids had ignored the governing body’s instruction to wait inside during the hunt-delaying rain. And to the rule-breakers went the spoils. Which, oddly, brought to mind the widespread looting that followed Katrina, for the same thought popped into my mind on both occasions. Differing degrees, to be certain, but the same thought nonetheless.

Even if you survive Mother Nature, there’s always human nature with which to contend.

Ah, the metaphors which abound. In the great Easter Egg Hunt of life, sometimes there are no eggs. Get good with it, kids, and maybe we’ll swing by Weigles and pick y’all up some Peeps. That’s right, my little ones. As much as Daddy hates it, I can’t say I’m surprised. Nor, for that matter, am I all that upset. For I see the good in it. Natural depravity, that is. Well, at least in getting acquainted with it. For it abounds to varying degrees, ones which worsen as you age. And no thing is immune to it. Not even Easter Egg Hunts.

Beside, y’all would have been the culprits had you been a bit older. Remember, it abounds to varying degrees, ones which worsen as you age. So take off those wet shoes, my innocent ones. And Kirby, you, your sandals. Because we don’t wanna get mud all over the kitchen floor. It’s witching hour, and I’ll be damned if we’re gonna clean you and the floor, too.

Upstairs, before bed, the questions weren’t what they might have been. Because some eggs were, indeed, found. It seemed only the adults were in on to the shortchanging that had occurred.

And much like they weren’t fazed by the rain, we weren’t fazed by the shortchanging . For it was still a week before Easter. There were two more hunts, yet. Ones which likely won’t be looted by the rough, tumble, polo-wearing, ten-year-old-types.

Besides, fewer jelly beans cannot change what it is that I really want them to understand about this Sunday.

He is risen. Despite our natural depravity. And because of it.

Happy Easter.