An Easter Memory

easter-egg
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Today is Thursday of Holy Week, known by some as Maundy Thursday, a.k.a. the night of the Last Supper. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, which, as we all know, led to Jesus' subsequent trial and crucifixion, not to mention Judas' suicide.

Well, my grandmother betrayed me with an egg one fine Easter Sunday nearly thirty years ago, leading to my own subsequent loss of innocence or "moral crucifixion," if you will.

The sun shone brightly that morn. My father sang the chants at the sunrise service at the Lutheran church across the street, and my mother carefully prepared a rigorous Easter egg hunt for my five-year-old big sister and myself. It all began innocently enough.

Then, at the end of the hunt, disillusionment and deception. My sister ended up with two more eggs than me. I cried. That was bad enough.

But then my grandmother insisted on getting involved. Thinking I was a retarded child, she told me to close my eyes. Deprived of sight, my other senses came alive. I heard her take one egg from my sister's basket and put it into mine. When my grandmother instructed me to open my eyes, I saw that the yellow egg once on the top of my sister's pile of eggs was now, in fact, on the top of my own. My grandmother told me I had miscounted and that I should try again.

Still crying, I tried to explain to Grandma that I was not actually retarded, that I knew she switched the eggs. She denied doing anything of the sort, and refused to change her story, no matter how much evidence I presented proving her falsity.

It was then, just shy of my third birthday, that I learned my grandmother was a duplicitous, conniving woman. Old people could not be trusted.