Saturday, March 22, 2008

Tevye Knows Best

Once again, I present to you all my rant about Easter baskets!

It's been updated for 2008, but it's the same rant.

Mom always created our Easter baskets herself, piece by piece, each little object carefully selected and each little foil-wrapped chocolate placed in exactly the right spot in the basket. Our Easter baskets were art. No other child in the world had Easter baskets like ours.

I create my children's Easter baskets myself, piece by piece, each little object carefully selected and each little foil-wrapped chocolate placed in exactly the right spot in the basket. My Easter baskets might not be considered art, as Mom's were, but no other child in the world has a basket like my children's own individual baskets.

Mom went out and bought an Easter basket before each of her children's first Easter, and she used the same basket for each child every single year, up until we grew up and moved away. The only reason she doesn't still create an Easter basket for us is that we've all got spouses and families and NOBODY could afford to make an individual basket for that many people. People that wealthy probably don't bother, have the nanny do it, or cop out and do it the lazy, easy way buy ready-made baskets, put together by a stranger who knows nothing about the children who will be tip-toeing into the living room Sunday morning to see what the Bunny left for them.

She considered creating one big basket for us to share, but we've never shared well and I doubt we'd start now.

I use the same baskets I have used every year that my children have existed. I would never even consider using a new basket, and I think, even now, that the kids would be horrified if I did. My children's Easter baskets, like their Christmas stockings, are unique and are re-created yearly only for them.

My children aren't even children, except they'll always be my children. They're in their twenties now, but I still create an Easter basket for them, every year. The eggs are boiled and cooling in the refrigerator so the kids can mix the food coloring to get all kinds of colors (science and art and holidays mix, you know) and I've had the basket goodies stashed away for weeks.

I think the main reason I create my children's Easter baskets from scratch every year goes further than just admiring the way Mom did it. I don't want to give my children something put together by anyone but me. I plan their Easter baskets long before I begin to put them together. I can see them in my mind's eye, before they even exist. It was so with the children themselves, and it is so with the things I do for them that separate special days from ordinary days. I believe that Charles Dickens said it best:

"The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed, but a thing created is loved before it exists."

The baskets in the picture are from Easter last year, AFTER the children were finished with them. That Easter grass is almost thirty years old, and all those little dangly things are, too.


Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly