April 1981. My brother and I are running around the backyard, searching for Easter eggs. It’s cold. Our movements are static, slightly-delayed in my mind—as though this is not a memory but an old slide-show film from the 70s.
He’s being nice to me for once, my brother. I remember that. Just yesterday, he stole my Miss Piggy doll and wouldn’t give it back until I burst into tears. Today, though, he’s a gem for all to see. I’ve got on his hand-me-down clothes, a red shirt that barely covers my round belly and elastic blue jeans. He pulls me this way and that, a little roughly, but I understand that this is “nice” for my brother.
For all the effort, I haven’t found any eggs. My brother has beaten me to all of them. But Mother, who is sweet and has a pretty, soft voice, tells him to “help” his sister find one. So he drags me over to a large rock in the yard and lo and behold, there is an egg tucked right beside it. I am happy.
Later. In Kindergarten, I find only one egg at our class Easter egg hunt. I am given a mercy award for having found the least amount in the class. I tried to find more, kind of. It’s exhausting running around for silly eggs. I get to the predictable hiding spots too late.
I learn a lesson about running after the other kids and doing what they are doing that day: if you run after what others have, you’ll end up panting–with nothing to show for it. I try to follow the kids who seem lucky in egg-hunting, but it gets me nowhere. For one thing, these kids are lucky; they find all the eggs. Everyone else has lots of eggs, and I am the only one who doesn’t. If only I could do it again, I think to myself 21 years later, I would be more intuitive, finding eggs—and my way—for myself.
Of course, lessons are easily forgotten. By the time I’m in 5th grade, the new girl at a new school, I try desperately to find a different face in the mirror, one more like popular girls in my class. I try to be like the other girls, thinking they are sure to help me find the light that seems to glow around them. But other girls are quicker than me, and I don’t become part of the entourage of snippy white girls in a poor town. I am reduced to slinking back to my unhappy existence, having clearly not found any eggs.
These days. The only time I ever eat eggs is if my father scrambles them. I watch my father work, smiling, laughing easily. He cracks and breaks the eggs. This is no big deal for him. Eggs are eggs to him. For me, they symbolize everything I have ever wanted but have been unable reach: popularity, maturity, understanding, friendship, and love. All the woes of childhood and adulthood found in the most common of breakfast foods.
Sitting at the table, listening to my father carry on, I hear my dad in another place and time telling me to let it go. I <em>should</em> let all the old go. I’ve spent too long pondering the past. I should enjoy my own life. Resolved for the moment, I can table this struggle for another day. I smile at my father.
With a little salt, I think, those eggs will be awfully tasty.
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