The Easter bunny came to our house--and it was fantastic.
Well, he didn’t exactly come to our house. He drove by. And, come to think of it, he didn’t drive by. He was driven by, in the back of a pick-up truck, following behind the fire chief’s SUV in a 2-vehicle caravan that slowly made its way throughout our town and eventually down our street.
No candy handed out, no hugs and definitely no sitting on the bunny’s lap for an Easter photo.
With coronavirus, Easter 2020 has not been what it used to be--and yet it was fantastic.
In our town, the Cranford Chamber of Commerce holds a pancake breakfast with the Easter bunny on the Saturday before Easter. Like so many other things, It was cancelled this year and in its place they organized the drive-by Easter bunny for yesterday, Saturday, April 11th. The town was divided into zones and everyone was given a rough time of when to expect the drive-by bunny in their zone or neighborhood. The bunny himself was tracked on social media by people posting updates on the Facebook group that’s sprung up in our town, “Virtual Cranford.”
I did not know much about this in advance. Saturday was another clear, spring day and we’d ventured out into the yard to do some gardening. Sara raked out the flower beds. I cut the lawn and put up tiered, rounded stakes around the emerging peonies.
(The peonies are yet another of nature’s metaphors of rebirth, renewal--and, yes, parenting. They go into hiding in the winter, cut down to nothing over winter, emerging as small stalks in the spring. There’s a critical window in their growth--right now--when it’s important to give them support. Wait too long and you can’t get those rounded stakes around the fully grown plants. Without the stakes, the peonies grow too wildly. The plants need to stay within what becomes an invisible cone. The rounded stakes keep them growing in place, eventually providing unseen and yet much needed support when the flowers do eventually bloom, weighing down each stalk which might otherwise fall to the ground without the supports.)
Parenting the peonies
Our neighbors to the left of us were the ones who told me about the zones. We were in zone 10 and the bunny was in zone 8 when they went out for their family bike ride, the kids telling us they had plenty of time to get back and get in place. When word spread that the bunny was finally in zone 10, our neighbors to the right took their place on their front stoop, sitting with their 2 kids. As we waited, I wandered over to their side of our yard and we got caught up. Together, we reviewed the 3 basic questions of coronavirus: are you safe, are you still working and how are you getting food.
At each house on the block with kids, parents were sitting on their front steps, children anxiously waiting, excited with every chirp from the fire chief that the bunny was nearby and approaching. Everyone stayed in their lane, silently observing the new rules of social distancing: stay in front of your house for the drive-by.
Sara and I are one of the older couples on the street now. No school-age kids. For us, watching the drive-by was our own virtual Easter, taking us back, a touchstone to our own Easters gone by. Easter egg hunts with our children, Easter baskets, and favorite Easter candies. When the Easter bunny came, it all happened quickly, the caravan slowly driving by, kids waving from the curb and sidewalk. A lot of people had their phones out to preserve the memory of the Easter bunny, 2020. It’s hard to see from the pictures, but the Easter bunny even had on a big mask and gloves. Again, it was fantastic.
Of course, the stories of the Easter bunny, his December big brother, Santa and their new offspring, Elf on a Shelf, are always fantastic. Just think of the strange fantasies we tell children about a strange man who comes into their house in the middle of the night to drop off presents, the elf who watches their every move and now the Easter bunny, going from zone to zone, following the fire chief in a new, drive-by holiday tradition.
For any child trying to make sense of the world, these fantasies sometimes don't add up. When we talked about the drive-by bunny at dinner, Sara reminded John that as a child he’d been frightened--and skeptical--of all adults in costume from the Easter bunny to Santa. He also questioned Santa’s late night deliveries. Sara had skipped the town tradition of bringing a wrapped present to the firehouse and then having Santa deliver that present the weekend before Christmas because it would prompt too many fears and questions from John. For those same reasons, she’d never taken John and Will to the town’s annual pancake breakfast with the Easter bunny.
In a Good Friday Zoom with my sisters the day before, Susan told a story about her son Seth. He was little and they were coloring Easter eggs Good Friday, an off-day from school. When the question of “What is Good Friday?” came up, she explained that it was the day that Jesus died. Without missing a beat, Seth said, “Oh man. Too bad, he missed Easter!”
And as I sit and write this on Easter day, Sunday April 12th, I find that I am missing Easter. Growing up, it was all about the fancy outfits. My Easter sport coat, my sisters’ Easter outfit and my mother’s Easter hat. It was the one time each year that we’d take a group family photo. We typically didn’t do that at Christmas.
Easter in Seaford, NY with my sisters, Ginny & Susan, and my mother, Jeanne. Circa, 1960
I pretended the hammer was a pipe. Funny what you remember?
Bob & Jeanne Thode with Ginny, Susan, Steve & Richard in Port Washington, NY, circa 1967
I also miss raising children and the chaos of Easter morning. My first wife Wendy was a Presbyterian minister so, with her work responsibilities, our Easter mornings were always especially chaotic. The night before, the Easter bunny would leave behind trails of jelly beans and M&Ms from their bedroom doors to the baskets downstairs. Annie remembered that the trails would change course once they hit the living room as her Easter bunny parents had colliding views of where the trails should be headed. One Easter, Wendy and I had just moved into a house in the suburbs. She had to attend a sunrise service and we decided to let Ted sleep in. We left him behind. He was in 3rd grade and woke up to a strange and empty house. He thought he heard a noise of someone banging around downstairs so ran outside in his pajamas and hid behind a neighbor’s car. Someone called the police at the strange sight, the police showed up and Ted explained that he thought someone was in the house but he was home alone and his parents were at a sunrise Easter service. The police searched the house and waited for us to get home from church. I spoke to Ted about that this morning--and he said he remembered it in vivid detail.
Annie, Betsy and Ted, circa 1994
Will and John, circa 1998 (Note the Pokemon toy)
Easter memories. Easter stories. Good and bad, they’re all fantastic. When you think about it, it is a miracle that any of us survived our childhoods. (I am sorry for more than my share of bad parenting decisions.) One of the recurring themes of my coronavirus conversations with my siblings (and children) is the focus on the crazy things that happened to us (and them), the near-misses that we adults all laugh about now--but could have just as easily turned out all wrong for us (and them) as kids.
A fire smothered in the kitchen.
Getting hit by a car but only the back tire.
Being fed baby aspirin in a hurricane.
This Easter, there’s the coronavirus pandemic which, so far, has not infected anyone in my family (the biggest Easter blessing of them all). Somehow, we have all made it through to this Easter Sunday. Survived and yet impacted, we’re still here.
When the children of today grow up and look back, the coronavirus may well be part of their Easter stories. Will they remember the Easter of 2020 and the socially distant drive-by Easter bunny? It was fantastic.
What did NOT happen?
A. Sara ordered shredded coconut on Amazon to make chocolate-covered coconut eggs that he grandmother used to make. When Sara made them, however, they looked more like bad sushi than Easter eggs. We all laughed--including Sara--and ate them anyway;
B. Sara made a pineapple upside-down cake with a can of pineapples we had in the pantry. I ate my piece upside down--or was that right-side up;
C. One month ago, on our last trip to the grocery store back on March 13th, Sara bought 2 ham steaks. We had them today for Easter dinner;
D. Ted shared a video he took this morning of his daughter Turner doing an Easter egg hunt on their front lawn. Erica’s parents, Turner’s other grandparents, have been social distancing but they set up the whole thing and left the eggs there for Turner to find. Erica was working her shift as an ICU nurse in suburban Detroit;
E. On a Zoom call with Ted, Annie and Betsy, Betsy remembered the time the Easter bunny had given her a gift certificate to get her ears pierced. She was in 4th grade and Wendy told her she was lucky because, though the Easter bunny had thought it was ok to get your ears pierced in 4th grade, she did not. Annie told us she had been forced to wait until 8th grade. Every Easter tells a story, don’t it?
Sara’s chocolate-covered coconut Easter “eggs”
A socially distant Easter for Turner in Michigan
Quarantined for Easter, 2020: Steve, Sara, John and Will
Want the answer?
Answer #26. Fantastic, April 12, 2020
If you’re a subscriber, the answer will be sent to you as a separate email when the question is published.
Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #27. Good Morning!
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #25. The onion.
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
Want to let me know how I’m doing with this quiz?
Please let me know about any typos or misspellings.
Comments, corrections and confessions welcome.
Thank you and good night.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for commenting.